Josiah willard gibbs discoveries magazine

American scientist (1839–1903)

For the American linguist and theologian, see Josiah Willard Gibbs, Sr. For the United States Navy ship, see USNS Josiah Willard Gibbs (T-AGOR-1).

Josiah Willard Gibbs (;^[2] February 11, 1839 – April 28, 1903) was an American scientist who made significant theoretical contributions to physics, chemistry, and mathematics.

His work on the applications of thermodynamics was instrumental in transforming physical chemistry into a rigorous deductive science. Together with James Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann, he created statistical mechanics (a term that he coined), explaining the laws of thermodynamics as consequences of the statistical properties of ensembles of the possible states of a physical system composed of many particles.

Gibbs also worked on the application of Maxwell's equations to problems in physical optics. As a mathematician, he created modern vector calculus (independently of the British scientist Ol