Essay, Research Paper: Josiah Gibbs

There are many greats when it comes to the history of chemistry, many in America. One such was Josiah Gibbs. He was a physicist and mathematician who made contributions to vector analysis, statistical mechanics and founded chemical thermodynamics.Josiah Willard Gibbs was born February 11, 1839 in New Haven, Connecticut. He was one of four children. His father, also Josiah Gibbs, was a teacher of literature at Yale University. He was a kind child, but very introverted while growing up. He was completely absorbed by his school work and had fragile health so he didn't socialize much with others. He enrolled at Yale in 1854 and graduated in 1858, receiving a number of awards for math and Latin. He then enrolled at the Yale graduate school and received the first doctorate in the U.S. for engineering. After leaving graduate school he tutored Latin and science for about two years and then went to Paris, Berlin and Hiedlberg to study from 1866 to 1869. He returned to New Haven and became a mthematical physics professor at Yale. In 1873 he wrote and published the papers Graphical Methods in the Thermodynamics of Fluids, and A Method of Geometrical Representation of the Thermodynamic Properties of Substances by Means of Surface. Thermodynamics is an area of physical science that studies the transfer of heat and the interconversion of heat and work in chemical or physical processes. The first paper talked about the relationships with energy, temperature, entropy (a quantative measure of the amound of thermal energy not able to do work), pressure, and volume in thermodynamic systems. He used a geometric approach to show this relationship system in two dimensions and also used diagramming. For example, a diagram where temperature and entropy are taken as coordinates. The heat/work of any cycle is proportional to its area in any part of the diagram. This was found very important when related to the study of the steam engine. His second paper showed the systme in three dimensions. Gibbs' most important paper, On The Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances, was published in 1876. This paper combined chemical, electromagnetic, elastic, electrochemical and surface properties into a single thermodynamic system. The usage of this theory and ideas in chemistry helped chemists have a better understanding of the chemical equilibrium in many phased systems.A second area that he worked on was Vector Analysis. A vector is a quantity stating direction and magnitude, such as velocity and force. Therefore, vector analysis is the manipulation of vectors and is very important in physics and engineering. He made a system for vector analysis that used physics and was much easier than Sir William Rowna Hamiliton's that used couplets of complex numbers. Using his vector knowledge he came up with a method for finding the orbit of a comet from three observations.A third area he contributed to was Electrochemistry. Physical science first emerged as a science in this field, the field that studies electrical chemical changes. He wrote five papers on the subject and also on the Electromagnetic Theory of Light. In 1875 he showed that chemical forces are measured by the voltages of operating batteries.
Another area he explored was statistical mechanics. Statisitcal mechanics is an area of physical science that relates the atomic nature of matter on a microscopic level with the observed behavior on a macroscopic level. In 1902 he wrote a paper Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics. This paper stated all the basics of statistical mechanics and really founded the science. He developed a formalism that dealth with not only gases, but liquids and solids as well and his statistical description of matter gave a prenotion for calculating the thermodynamic properties of matter. His work also helped provide the "mathematical framework" for the quantam theory, which deals with the creation and destruction of matter, and helped James Clerk Maxwell's theories about electricity and magnetic lines of force, this having to do with the behavior of electic and magnetic fields. This paper, Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics, was his last published work. One subject he never published work on, but did work with a lot was the chemical equilibrium. This has to do with a mixture of maybe 4 components, that is put in a chamber. The reactions reach a state where the rates of forward and reverse reaciton are equal. At the equilibrium, there are not changes in concentration of the components. Mr. Gibbs came up with the Phase Rule, which is F=C-P+2 and stated that this applies and can always be used in chemical equilibrium. It is a useful rule because it can be used as a check to see if a proposed system would be at equilibrium.Although he wasn't very popular or well known during his time, Josiah Gibbs did have two notable followers. The first is James Clerk Maxwell, who studied his work and used it as a basis for some of his theories and later works and Wilhelm Oswald and Le Chatelier. Oswald translated Gibbs' work into German in 1892 and Le Chatelier translated his work into French in 1899. Gibbs was not too well known in American but to the rest of the worlfd it could have been as if he never would have existed. When his works were translated into French and German, many people started to grasp his ideas and incorporate them into their work. As a result of the translations, he became well known in Europe, but still not recognized in America. His work tended to focus more on the theorectical aspect while the scientists at his time were focusing on the more practical aspects of the sciences and new discoveries.Gibbs spent the rest of his life living in New Haven teaching at Yale. He never married. He died on April 28, 1904. His work wasn't recognized in America until many years after his death. Even though his name isn't one of the more commonly heard names, and we don't directly study any of his work, Josiah Gibbs was an important figure in the history of chemistry. Just imagine, if he had never existed or come up with the things he had, where would we be today in terms of science and what would we be studying?