163-462: Josiah Willard Gibbs ( / ɡ ɪ b z / ; 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
326-484: A lecture against slavery while dressed as a soldier, after which he plunged a sword into a bible containing a bladder of fake blood ( pokeberry juice) that splattered those nearby. On September 9, 1739, a literate slave named Jemmy led a rebellion against South Carolina slaveholders in an event referred to as the Stono Rebellion (also known as Cato's Conspiracy and Cato's Rebellion.) The runaway slaves involved in
489-402: A thermodynamic system is equal to the energy gained as heat, Q {\displaystyle Q} , less the thermodynamic work, W {\displaystyle W} , done by the system on its surroundings. where Δ U {\displaystyle \Delta U} denotes the change in the internal energy of a closed system (for which heat or work through
652-458: A vector calculus well-suited to the needs of physicists. With this object in mind, Gibbs distinguished between the dot and cross products of two vectors and introduced the concept of dyadics . Similar work was carried out independently, and at around the same time, by the British mathematical physicist and engineer Oliver Heaviside . Gibbs sought to convince other physicists of the convenience of
815-534: A PhD degree and Gibbs's was only the fifth PhD granted in the US in any subject. After graduation, Gibbs was appointed as tutor at the college for a term of three years. During the first two years, he taught Latin, and during the third year, he taught "natural philosophy" (i.e., physics). In 1866, he patented a design for a railway brake and read a paper before the Connecticut Academy, entitled "The Proper Magnitude of
978-453: A book too little read because it is a little difficult to read, is Gibbs, in his Elementary Principles of Statistical Mechanics ". Gibbs's analysis of irreversibility, and his formulation of Boltzmann's H-theorem and of the ergodic hypothesis , were major influences on the mathematical physics of the 20th century. Gibbs was well aware that the application of the equipartition theorem to large systems of classical particles failed to explain
1141-457: A central role in Claude Shannon 's information theory and is therefore often seen as the basis of the modern information-theoretical interpretation of thermodynamics. According to Henri Poincaré , writing in 1904, even though Maxwell and Boltzmann had previously explained the irreversibility of macroscopic physical processes in probabilistic terms, "the one who has seen it most clearly, in
1304-448: A change in the internal energy of the system need to be accounted for in the energy balance equation. The volume contained by the walls can be the region surrounding a single atom resonating energy, such as Max Planck defined in 1900; it can be a body of steam or air in a steam engine , such as Sadi Carnot defined in 1824. The system could also be just one nuclide (i.e. a system of quarks ) as hypothesized in quantum thermodynamics . When
1467-686: A chapter on Gibbs's work in the next edition of his Theory of Heat , published in 1875. He explained the usefulness of Gibbs's graphical methods in a lecture to the Chemical Society of London and even referred to it in the article on "Diagrams" that he wrote for the Encyclopædia Britannica . Prospects of collaboration between him and Gibbs were cut short by Maxwell's early death in 1879, aged 48. The joke later circulated in New Haven that "only one man lived who could understand Gibbs's papers. That
1630-540: A concern for Black civil rights. However, James Stewart advocates a more nuanced understanding of the relationship of abolition and anti-slavery prior to the Civil War: While instructive, the distinction [between anti-slavery and abolition] can also be misleading, especially in assessing abolitionism's political impact. For one thing, slaveholders never bothered with such fine points. Many immediate abolitionists showed no less concern than did other white Northerners about
1793-466: A concise definition of thermodynamics in 1854 which stated, "Thermo-dynamics is the subject of the relation of heat to forces acting between contiguous parts of bodies, and the relation of heat to electrical agency." German physicist and mathematician Rudolf Clausius restated Carnot's principle known as the Carnot cycle and gave to the theory of heat a truer and sounder basis. His most important paper, "On
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#17328989615941956-399: A conservative Democrat , in the election of 1884 . Little else is known of his religious or political views, which he mostly kept to himself. Gibbs did not produce a substantial personal correspondence, and many of his letters were later lost or destroyed. Beyond the technical writings concerning his research, he published only two other pieces: a brief obituary for Rudolf Clausius , one of
2119-417: A correlation between pressure , temperature , and volume . In time, Boyle's Law was formulated, which states that pressure and volume are inversely proportional . Then, in 1679, based on these concepts, an associate of Boyle's named Denis Papin built a steam digester , which was a closed vessel with a tightly fitting lid that confined steam until a high pressure was generated. Later designs implemented
2282-737: A crime , through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (ratified 1865). The anti-slavery movement originated during the Age of Enlightenment , focused on ending the transatlantic slave trade . In Colonial America, a few German Quakers issued the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery , which marked the beginning of the American abolitionist movement. Before the Revolutionary War , evangelical colonists were
2445-726: A crime, in 1865. This was a direct result of the Union victory in the American Civil War . The central issue of the war was slavery. Historian James M. McPherson in 1964 defined an abolitionist "as one who before the Civil War had agitated for the immediate, unconditional and total abolition of slavery in the United States". He notes that many historians have used a broader definition without his emphasis on immediacy. Thus he does not include opponents of slavery such as Abraham Lincoln or
2608-400: A description often referred to as geometrical thermodynamics . A description of any thermodynamic system employs the four laws of thermodynamics that form an axiomatic basis. The first law specifies that energy can be transferred between physical systems as heat , as work , and with transfer of matter. The second law defines the existence of a quantity called entropy , that describes
2771-430: A few. This article is focused mainly on classical thermodynamics which primarily studies systems in thermodynamic equilibrium . Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is often treated as an extension of the classical treatment, but statistical mechanics has brought many advances to that field. The history of thermodynamics as a scientific discipline generally begins with Otto von Guericke who, in 1650, built and designed
2934-463: A large increase in steam engine efficiency. Drawing on all the previous work led Sadi Carnot , the "father of thermodynamics", to publish Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire (1824), a discourse on heat, power, energy and engine efficiency. The book outlined the basic energetic relations between the Carnot engine , the Carnot cycle , and motive power. It marked the start of thermodynamics as
3097-403: A looser viewpoint is adopted, and the requirement of thermodynamic equilibrium is dropped, the system can be the body of a tropical cyclone , such as Kerry Emanuel theorized in 1986 in the field of atmospheric thermodynamics , or the event horizon of a black hole . Boundaries are of four types: fixed, movable, real, and imaginary. For example, in an engine, a fixed boundary means the piston
3260-474: A mass of isolated facts and observations. The work has been described as "the Principia of thermodynamics" and as a work of "practically unlimited scope". It solidly laid the foundation for physical Chemistry. Wilhelm Ostwald , who translated Gibbs's monograph into German, referred to Gibbs as the "founder of chemical energetics". According to modern commentators, It is universally recognised that its publication
3423-656: A modern science. The first thermodynamic textbook was written in 1859 by William Rankine , originally trained as a physicist and a civil and mechanical engineering professor at the University of Glasgow . The first and second laws of thermodynamics emerged simultaneously in the 1850s, primarily out of the works of William Rankine, Rudolf Clausius , and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin). The foundations of statistical thermodynamics were set out by physicists such as James Clerk Maxwell , Ludwig Boltzmann , Max Planck , Rudolf Clausius and J. Willard Gibbs . Clausius, who first stated
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#17328989615943586-424: A physical or notional, but serve to confine the system to a finite volume. Segments of the boundary are often described as walls ; they have respective defined 'permeabilities'. Transfers of energy as work , or as heat , or of matter , between the system and the surroundings, take place through the walls, according to their respective permeabilities. Matter or energy that pass across the boundary so as to effect
3749-481: A political movement is usually dated from 1 January 1831, when Wm. Lloyd Garrison (as he always signed himself) published the first issue of his new weekly newspaper, The Liberator (1831), which appeared without interruption until slavery in the United States was abolished in 1865, when it closed. Abolitionists included those who joined the American Anti-Slavery Society or its auxiliary groups in
3912-405: A principle was far more than just the wish to prevent the expansion of slavery. After 1840, abolitionists rejected this because it let sin continue to exist; they demanded that slavery end everywhere, immediately and completely. John Brown was the only abolitionist to have actually planned a violent insurrection, though David Walker promoted the idea. The abolitionist movement was strengthened by
4075-493: A prominent Bostonian, wrote The Selling of Joseph (1700) in protest of the widening practice of outright slavery as opposed to indentured servitude in the colonies. This is the earliest-recorded anti-slavery tract published in the future United States. Slavery was banned in the colony of Georgia soon after its founding in 1733. The colony's founder, James Edward Oglethorpe , fended off repeated attempts by South Carolina merchants and land speculators to introduce slavery into
4238-465: A punishing regimen of study, Gibbs caught a serious cold and a doctor, fearing tuberculosis, advised him to rest on the Riviera , where he and his sisters spent several months and where he made a full recovery. Moving to Berlin , Gibbs attended the lectures taught by mathematicians Karl Weierstrass and Leopold Kronecker , as well as by chemist Heinrich Gustav Magnus . In August 1867, Gibbs's sister Julia
4401-402: A quotation from Rudolf Clausius that expresses what would later be called the first and second laws of thermodynamics : "The energy of the world is constant. The entropy of the world tends towards a maximum." Gibbs's monograph rigorously and ingeniously applied his thermodynamic techniques to the interpretation of physico-chemical phenomena, explaining and relating what had previously been
4564-468: A role in a wide variety of topics in science and engineering . Historically, thermodynamics developed out of a desire to increase the efficiency of early steam engines , particularly through the work of French physicist Sadi Carnot (1824) who believed that engine efficiency was the key that could help France win the Napoleonic Wars . Scots-Irish physicist Lord Kelvin was the first to formulate
4727-708: A sense of protection from their government. Led by Nathaniel Bacon , the unification that occurred between the white lower class and blacks during this rebellion was perceived as dangerous and thus was quashed with the implementation of the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 . Still, this event introduced the premise that blacks and whites could work together towards the goal of self-liberation, which became increasingly prevalent as abolition gained traction within America. The first statement against slavery in Colonial America
4890-441: A set number of variables held constant. A thermodynamic process may be defined as the energetic evolution of a thermodynamic system proceeding from an initial state to a final state. It can be described by process quantities . Typically, each thermodynamic process is distinguished from other processes in energetic character according to what parameters, such as temperature, pressure, or volume, etc., are held fixed; Furthermore, it
5053-448: A slave. According to historian Steven Pincus , many of the colonial legislatures worked to enact laws that would limit slavery. The Provincial legislature of Massachusetts Bay , as noted by historian Gary B. Nash , approved a law "prohibiting the importation and purchase of slaves by any Massachusetts citizen." The Loyalist governor of Massachusetts , Thomas Hutchinson , vetoed the law, an action that prompted angered reaction from
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5216-439: A steam release valve that kept the machine from exploding. By watching the valve rhythmically move up and down, Papin conceived of the idea of a piston and a cylinder engine. He did not, however, follow through with his design. Nevertheless, in 1697, based on Papin's designs, engineer Thomas Savery built the first engine, followed by Thomas Newcomen in 1712. Although these early engines were crude and inefficient, they attracted
5379-401: A system on its surrounding requires that the system's internal energy U {\displaystyle U} decrease or be consumed, so that the amount of internal energy lost by that work must be resupplied as heat Q {\displaystyle Q} by an external energy source or as work by an external machine acting on the system (so that U {\displaystyle U}
5542-621: A textbook, Vector Analysis , published in 1901. That book helped to popularize the " del " notation that is widely used today in electrodynamics and fluid mechanics . In other mathematical work, he re-discovered the " Gibbs phenomenon " in the theory of Fourier series (which, unbeknownst to him and to later scholars, had been described fifty years before by an obscure English mathematician, Henry Wilbraham ). From 1882 to 1889, Gibbs wrote five papers on physical optics , in which he investigated birefringence and other optical phenomena and defended Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light against
5705-467: A third, they are also in thermal equilibrium with each other. This statement implies that thermal equilibrium is an equivalence relation on the set of thermodynamic systems under consideration. Systems are said to be in equilibrium if the small, random exchanges between them (e.g. Brownian motion ) do not lead to a net change in energy. This law is tacitly assumed in every measurement of temperature. Thus, if one seeks to decide whether two bodies are at
5868-615: A war goal for the Union in 1861 and was fully achieved in 1865. American abolitionism began well before the United States was founded as a nation. In 1652, Rhode Island made it illegal for any person, black or white, to be "bound" longer than ten years. The law, however, was widely ignored, and Rhode Island became involved in the slave trade in 1700. The first act of resistance against an upper-class white colonial government from slaves can be seen in Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. Occurring in Virginia,
6031-515: A well-nigh finished theoretical structure". Gibbs was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He belonged to an old Yankee family that had produced distinguished American clergymen and academics since the 17th century. He was the fourth of five children and the only son of Josiah Willard Gibbs Sr. , and his wife Mary Anna, née Van Cleve. On his father's side, he was descended from Samuel Willard , who served as acting President of Harvard College from 1701 to 1707. On his mother's side, one of his ancestors
6194-474: A wide variety of topics in science and engineering , such as engines , phase transitions , chemical reactions , transport phenomena , and even black holes . The results of thermodynamics are essential for other fields of physics and for chemistry , chemical engineering , corrosion engineering , aerospace engineering , mechanical engineering , electrical engineering , cell biology , biomedical engineering , materials science , and economics , to name
6357-413: Is a principal property of the thermodynamic state , while heat and work are modes of energy transfer by which a process may change this state. A change of internal energy of a system may be achieved by any combination of heat added or removed and work performed on or by the system. As a function of state , the internal energy does not depend on the manner, or on the path through intermediate steps, by which
6520-399: Is at equilibrium, producing thermodynamic processes which develop so slowly as to allow each intermediate step to be an equilibrium state and are said to be reversible processes . When a system is at equilibrium under a given set of conditions, it is said to be in a definite thermodynamic state . The state of the system can be described by a number of state quantities that do not depend on
6683-549: Is chiefly remembered today as the abolitionist who found an interpreter for the African passengers of the ship Amistad , allowing them to testify during the trial that followed their rebellion against being sold as slaves. Willard Gibbs was educated at the Hopkins School and entered Yale College in 1854 at the age of 15. At Yale, Gibbs received prizes for excellence in mathematics and Latin , and he graduated in 1858, near
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6846-647: Is determining the spontaneity of a given transformation. Equilibrium thermodynamics is the study of transfers of matter and energy in systems or bodies that, by agencies in their surroundings, can be driven from one state of thermodynamic equilibrium to another. The term 'thermodynamic equilibrium' indicates a state of balance, in which all macroscopic flows are zero; in the case of the simplest systems or bodies, their intensive properties are homogeneous, and their pressures are perpendicular to their boundaries. In an equilibrium state there are no unbalanced potentials, or driving forces, between macroscopically distinct parts of
7009-415: Is locked at its position, within which a constant volume process might occur. If the piston is allowed to move that boundary is movable while the cylinder and cylinder head boundaries are fixed. For closed systems, boundaries are real while for open systems boundaries are often imaginary. In the case of a jet engine, a fixed imaginary boundary might be assumed at the intake of the engine, fixed boundaries along
7172-425: Is recovered) to make the system work continuously. For processes that include transfer of matter, a further statement is needed: With due account of the respective fiducial reference states of the systems, when two systems, which may be of different chemical compositions, initially separated only by an impermeable wall, and otherwise isolated, are combined into a new system by the thermodynamic operation of removal of
7335-403: Is said to be in a state of thermodynamic equilibrium . Once in thermodynamic equilibrium, a system's properties are, by definition, unchanging in time. Systems in equilibrium are much simpler and easier to understand than are systems which are not in equilibrium. Often, when analysing a dynamic thermodynamic process, the simplifying assumption is made that each intermediate state in the process
7498-431: Is simply related to the free energy change when the reactants are in their standard states : Chemical potential is usually defined as partial molar Gibbs free energy: Gibbs also obtained what later came to be known as the " Gibbs–Duhem equation ". In an electrochemical reaction characterized by an electromotive force ℰ and an amount of transferred charge Q , Gibbs's starting equation becomes The publication of
7661-457: Is the branch of physics that studies heat , work , and temperature and their relation to energy , entropy , and the physical properties of matter and radiation . The behavior of these quantities is governed by the four laws of thermodynamics , which convey a quantitative description using measurable macroscopic physical quantities , but may be explained in terms of microscopic constituents by statistical mechanics . Thermodynamics plays
7824-420: Is used to model exchanges of energy, work and heat based on the laws of thermodynamics . The qualifier classical reflects the fact that it represents the first level of understanding of the subject as it developed in the 19th century and describes the changes of a system in terms of macroscopic empirical (large scale, and measurable) parameters. A microscopic interpretation of these concepts was later provided by
7987-482: Is useful to group these processes into pairs, in which each variable held constant is one member of a conjugate pair. Abolitionism in the United States In the United States, abolitionism , the movement that sought to end slavery in the country , was active from the colonial era until the American Civil War , the end of which brought about the abolition of American slavery, except as punishment for
8150-402: Is very useful in diverse areas, such as metallurgy, mineralogy, and petrology. It can also be applied to various research problems in physical chemistry. Together with James Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann , Gibbs founded "statistical mechanics", a term that he coined to identify the branch of theoretical physics that accounts for the observed thermodynamic properties of systems in terms of
8313-426: Is −273.15 °C (degrees Celsius), or −459.67 °F (degrees Fahrenheit), or 0 K (kelvin), or 0° R (degrees Rankine ). An important concept in thermodynamics is the thermodynamic system , which is a precisely defined region of the universe under study. Everything in the universe except the system is called the surroundings . A system is separated from the remainder of the universe by a boundary which may be
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#17328989615948476-586: The American Revolutionary War and was reorganized in 1784, with Benjamin Franklin as its first president. In 1777, independent Vermont , not yet a state, became the first polity in North America to prohibit slavery: slaves were not directly freed, but masters were required to remove slaves from Vermont. The Constitution included several provisions which accommodated slavery, although none used
8639-630: The Civil War of 1861–65. He was not conscripted and he remained at Yale for the duration of the war. In 1863, Gibbs received the first Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) in engineering granted in the US, for a thesis entitled "On the Form of the Teeth of Wheels in Spur Gearing", in which he used geometrical techniques to investigate the optimum design for gears . In 1861, Yale had become the first US university to offer
8802-497: The Legendre transform of this expression, he defined the concepts of enthalpy H and Gibbs free energy G : This compares to the expression for Helmholtz free energy A : When the Gibbs free energy for a chemical reaction is negative, the reaction will proceed spontaneously. When a chemical system is at equilibrium , the change in Gibbs free energy is zero. An equilibrium constant
8965-619: The Massachusetts courts in freedom suits , spurred on the decision made in the Somerset v. Stewart case, which although not applying the colonies was still received positively by American abolitionists. Boston lawyer Benjamin Kent represented them. In 1766, Kent won a case ( Slew v. Whipple ) to liberate Jenny Slew , a mixed-race woman who had been kidnapped in Massachusetts and then handled as
9128-575: The Republican Party ; they called for the immediate end to expansion of slavery before 1861. The religious component of American abolitionism was great. It began with the Quakers , then moved to the other Protestants with the Second Great Awakening of the early 19th century. Many leaders were ministers. Saying slavery was sinful made its evil easy to understand, and tended to arouse fervor for
9291-530: The Underground Railroad . This was made illegal by the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 , arguably the most hated and most openly evaded federal legislation in the nation's history. Nevertheless, participants like Harriet Tubman , Henry Highland Garnet , Alexander Crummell , Amos Noë Freeman , and others continued with their work. Abolitionists were particularly active in Ohio , where some worked directly in
9454-578: The United States Constitution did or did not protect slavery. This issue arose in the late 1840s after the publication of The Unconstitutionality of Slavery by Lysander Spooner . The Garrisonians, led by Garrison and Wendell Phillips , publicly burned copies of the Constitution, called it a pact with slavery, and demanded its abolition and replacement. Another camp, led by Lysander Spooner , Gerrit Smith , and eventually Douglass, considered
9617-404: The energy , entropy , volume , temperature and pressure of the thermodynamic system in such a manner, one can determine if a process would occur spontaneously. Also Pierre Duhem in the 19th century wrote about chemical thermodynamics. During the early 20th century, chemists such as Gilbert N. Lewis , Merle Randall , and E. A. Guggenheim applied the mathematical methods of Gibbs to
9780-431: The importation of slaves a crime, effective January 1, 1808, which was as soon as Article I, section 9 of the Constitution allowed. A small but dedicated group, under leaders such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass , agitated for abolition in the mid-19th century. John Brown became an advocate and militia leader in attempting to end slavery by force of arms. In the Civil War, immediate emancipation became
9943-410: 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 Oliver Heaviside , who carried out similar work during
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#173289896159410106-521: The upper South , freed slaves, sometimes in their wills. Many noted they had been moved by the revolutionary ideals of the equality of men. The number of free blacks as a proportion of the black population in the upper South increased from less than 1 percent to nearly 10 percent between 1790 and 1810 as a result of these actions. Some slave owners, concerned about the increase in free blacks, which they viewed as destabilizing, freed slaves on condition that they emigrate to Africa . All U.S. states abolished
10269-757: The 1830s and 1840s, as the movement fragmented. The fragmented anti-slavery movement included groups such as the Liberty Party ; the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society ; the American Missionary Association ; and the Church Anti-Slavery Society . Historians traditionally distinguish between moderate anti-slavery reformers or gradualists, who concentrated on stopping the spread of slavery, and radical abolitionists or immediatists, whose demands for unconditional emancipation often merged with
10432-716: The Bridge Street African Methodist Episcopal Church , and lived on Duffield Street. His fellow Duffield Street residents Thomas and Harriet Truesdell were leading members of the abolitionist movement. Mr. Truesdell was a founding member of the Providence Anti-slavery Society before moving to Brooklyn in 1838. Harriet Truesdell was also very active in the movement, organizing an anti-slavery convention in Pennsylvania Hall (Philadelphia) . Another prominent Brooklyn-based abolitionist
10595-796: The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1780). The Quaker Quarterly Meeting of Chester, Pennsylvania , made its first protest in 1711. Within a few decades the entire slave trade was under attack, being opposed by such Quaker leaders as William Burling, Benjamin Lay , Ralph Sandiford, William Southby, John Woolman , and Anthony Benezet . Benezet was particularly influential, inspiring a later generation of notable anti-slavery activists, including Granville Sharp , John Wesley , Thomas Clarkson , Olaudah Equiano , Benjamin Franklin , Benjamin Rush , Absalom Jones , and Bishop Richard Allen , among others. Samuel Sewall ,
10758-416: The Constitution to be an anti-slavery document. Using an argument based upon Natural Law and a form of social contract theory, they said that slavery fell outside the Constitution's scope of legitimate authority and therefore should be abolished. Another split in the abolitionist movement was along class lines. The artisan republicanism of Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright stood in stark contrast to
10921-465: The Moving Force of Heat", published in 1850, first stated the second law of thermodynamics . In 1865 he introduced the concept of entropy. In 1870 he introduced the virial theorem , which applied to heat. The initial application of thermodynamics to mechanical heat engines was quickly extended to the study of chemical compounds and chemical reactions. Chemical thermodynamics studies the nature of
11084-743: The North. In 1835 alone, abolitionists mailed over a million pieces of anti-slavery literature to the South, giving rise to the gag rules in Congress, after the theft of mail from the Charleston, South Carolina , post office, and much back-and-forth about whether postmasters were required to deliver this mail. According to the Postmaster General , they were not. Under the Constitution, the importation of enslaved persons could not be prohibited until 1808 (20 years). As
11247-446: The South, members of the abolitionist movement or other people opposing slavery were often targets of lynch mob violence before the American Civil War . Numerous known abolitionists lived, worked, and worshipped in downtown Brooklyn , from Henry Ward Beecher , who auctioned slaves into freedom from the pulpit of Plymouth Church, to Nathaniel Eggleston, a leader of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society , who also preached at
11410-622: The Underground Railroad. Since only the Ohio River separated free Ohio from slave Kentucky, it was a popular destination for fugitive slaves. Supporters helped them there, in many cases to cross Lake Erie by boat, into Canada. The Western Reserve area of northeast Ohio was "probably the most intensely antislavery section of the country." The Oberlin-Wellington Rescue got national publicity. Abolitionist John Brown grew up in Hudson, Ohio . In
11573-511: The United States to earn an international reputation and was praised by Albert Einstein as "the greatest mind in American history". In 1901, Gibbs received what was then considered the highest honor awarded by the international scientific community, the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London, "for his contributions to mathematical physics". Commentators and biographers have remarked on
11736-630: The Units of Length", in which he proposed a scheme for rationalizing the system of units of measurement used in mechanics. After his term as tutor ended, Gibbs traveled to Europe with his sisters. They spent the winter of 1866–67 in Paris, where Gibbs attended lectures at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France , given by such distinguished mathematical scientists as Joseph Liouville and Michel Chasles . Having undertaken
11899-731: The act in 1750 after the Spanish's defeat in the Battle of Bloody Marsh eight years prior. During the Revolutionary era, all states abolished the international slave trade , but South Carolina reversed its decision. Between the Revolutionary War and 1804, laws, constitutions, or court decisions in each of the Northern states provided for the gradual or immediate abolition of slavery. No Southern state adopted similar policies. In 1807, Congress made
12062-582: The activities of free African Americans, especially in the Black church , who argued that the old Biblical justifications for slavery contradicted the New Testament . African-American activists and their writings were rarely heard outside the Black community. However, they were tremendously influential on a few sympathetic white people, most prominently the first white activist to reach prominence, Wm. Lloyd Garrison , who
12225-422: The afternoon, of taking a stroll about the streets between his study in the old Sloane Laboratory and his home—a little exercise between work and dinner—and one might occasionally come across him at that time." Gibbs did supervise the doctoral thesis on mathematical economics written by Irving Fisher in 1891. After Gibbs's death, Fisher financed the publication of his Collected Works . Another distinguished student
12388-415: The analysis of chemical processes. Thermodynamics has an intricate etymology. By a surface-level analysis, the word consists of two parts that can be traced back to Ancient Greek. Firstly, thermo- ("of heat"; used in words such as thermometer ) can be traced back to the root θέρμη therme , meaning "heat". Secondly, the word dynamics ("science of force [or power]") can be traced back to
12551-491: The attention of the leading scientists of the time. The fundamental concepts of heat capacity and latent heat , which were necessary for the development of thermodynamics, were developed by Professor Joseph Black at the University of Glasgow, where James Watt was employed as an instrument maker. Black and Watt performed experiments together, but it was Watt who conceived the idea of the external condenser which resulted in
12714-582: The basic ideas of the second law in his paper "On the Moving Force of Heat", published in 1850, and is called "one of the founding fathers of thermodynamics", introduced the concept of entropy in 1865. During the years 1873–76 the American mathematical physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs published a series of three papers, the most famous being On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances , in which he showed how thermodynamic processes , including chemical reactions , could be graphically analyzed, by studying
12877-428: The case of Commonwealth v. Nathaniel Jennison , reaffirmed the case of Brom and Bett v. Ashley , which held that even slaves were people who had a constitutional right to liberty. This gave freedom to slaves, effectively abolishing slavery. States with a greater economic interest in slaves, such as New York and New Jersey, passed gradual emancipation laws. While some of these laws were gradual, these states enacted
13040-457: The cause. The debate about slavery was often based on what the Bible said or did not say about it. John Brown , who had studied the Bible for the ministry, proclaimed that he was "an instrument of God". As such, abolitionism in the United States was identified by historians as an expression of moralism , it often operated in tandem with another social reform effort, the temperance movement . Slavery
13203-405: The classical laws known to Gibbs and to his contemporaries. His resolution of the so-called " Gibbs paradox ", about the entropy of the mixing of gases, is now often cited as a prefiguration of the indistinguishability of particles required by quantum physics. British scientists, including Maxwell, had relied on Hamilton's quaternions in order to express the dynamics of physical quantities, like
13366-464: The colony. His motivations included tactical defense against Spanish collusion with runaway slaves, and prevention of Georgia's largely reformed criminal population from replicating South Carolina's planter class structure. In 1739, he wrote to the Georgia Trustees urging them to hold firm: If we allow slaves we act against the very principles by which we associated together, which was to relieve
13529-412: The concept of the chemical potential μ {\displaystyle \mu } of a given chemical species, defined to be the rate of the increase in U associated with the increase in the number N of molecules of that species (at constant entropy and volume). Thus, it was Gibbs who first combined the first and second laws of thermodynamics by expressing the infinitesimal change in
13692-548: The contrast between Gibbs's quiet, solitary life in turn of the century New England and the great international impact of his ideas. Though his work was almost entirely theoretical, the practical value of Gibbs's contributions became evident with the development of industrial chemistry during the first half of the 20th century. According to Robert A. Millikan , in pure science, Gibbs "did for statistical mechanics and thermodynamics what Laplace did for celestial mechanics and Maxwell did for electrodynamics, namely, made his field
13855-405: The correctness of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. Gibbs coined the term statistical mechanics and introduced key concepts in the corresponding mathematical description of physical systems, including the notions of chemical potential (1876), and statistical ensemble (1902). Gibbs's derivation of the laws of thermodynamics from the statistical properties of systems consisting of many particles
14018-413: The determination of entropy. The entropy determined relative to this point is the absolute entropy. Alternate definitions include "the entropy of all systems and of all states of a system is smallest at absolute zero," or equivalently "it is impossible to reach the absolute zero of temperature by any finite number of processes". Absolute zero, at which all activity would stop if it were possible to achieve,
14181-462: The development of statistical mechanics . Statistical mechanics , also known as statistical thermodynamics, emerged with the development of atomic and molecular theories in the late 19th century and early 20th century, and supplemented classical thermodynamics with an interpretation of the microscopic interactions between individual particles or quantum-mechanical states. This field relates the microscopic properties of individual atoms and molecules to
14344-862: The direction, thermodynamically, that a system can evolve and quantifies the state of order of a system and that can be used to quantify the useful work that can be extracted from the system. In thermodynamics, interactions between large ensembles of objects are studied and categorized. Central to this are the concepts of the thermodynamic system and its surroundings . A system is composed of particles, whose average motions define its properties, and those properties are in turn related to one another through equations of state . Properties can be combined to express internal energy and thermodynamic potentials , which are useful for determining conditions for equilibrium and spontaneous processes . With these tools, thermodynamics can be used to describe how systems respond to changes in their environment. This can be applied to
14507-466: The disposal of the blacks, and that this foul and unnatural crime of holding men in bondage will finally be rooted out from our land." In the 1830s there was a progressive shift in thinking in the North. Mainstream opinion changed from gradual emancipation and resettlement of freed blacks in Africa, sometimes a condition of their manumission , to immediatism: freeing all the slaves immediately and sorting out
14670-639: The distresses. Whereas, now we should occasion the misery of thousands in Africa, by setting men upon using arts to buy and bring into perpetual slavery the poor people who now live there free. In 1737, Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lay published All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage: Apostates , which was printed by his friend, Benjamin Franklin. The following year, during the 1738 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in Burlington, New Jersey , Lay gave
14833-425: The electric and magnetic fields, having both a magnitude and a direction in three-dimensional space. Following W. K. Clifford in his Elements of Dynamic (1888), Gibbs noted that the product of quaternions could be separated into two parts: a one-dimensional (scalar) quantity and a three-dimensional vector , so that the use of quaternions involved mathematical complications and redundancies that could be avoided in
14996-600: The end of the 20 years approached, an Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves sailed through Congress with little opposition. President Jefferson signed it, and it went effect on January 1, 1808. In 1820, the Act to Protect the Commerce of the United States and Punish the Crime of Piracy was passed. This law made importing slaves into the United States a death penalty offense . The Confederate States of America continued this prohibition with
15159-475: The entropy of an arbitrary ensemble as where k B {\displaystyle k_{\text{B}}} is the Boltzmann constant , while the sum is over all possible microstates i {\displaystyle i} , with p i {\displaystyle p_{i}} the corresponding probability of the microstate (see Gibbs entropy formula ). This same formula would later play
15322-743: The fate of the nation's "precious legacies of freedom". Immediatism became most difficult to distinguish from broader anti-Southern opinions once ordinary citizens began articulating these intertwining beliefs. Nearly all Northern politicians, such as Abraham Lincoln , rejected the "immediate emancipation" called for by the abolitionists, seeing it as "extreme". Indeed, many Northern leaders, including Lincoln, Stephen Douglas (the Democratic nominee in 1860), John C. Frémont (the Republican nominee in 1856), and Ulysses S. Grant married into slave-owning Southern families without any moral qualms. Anti-slavery as
15485-448: The first abolition laws in the entire " New World ". In the State of New York, the enslaved population was transformed into indentured servants before being granted full emancipation in 1827. In other states, abolitionist legislation provided freedom only for the children of the enslaved. In New Jersey, slavery was not fully prohibited until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment . All of
15648-452: The formulation of abolitionist ideology in the United States. The federal government prohibited the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, prohibited the slave trade in the District of Columbia in 1850, outlawed slavery in the District of Columbia in 1862, and, with the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution , made slavery unconstitutional altogether, except as punishment for
15811-424: The founders of the mathematical theory of thermodynamics, and a longer biographical memoir of his mentor at Yale, H. A. Newton. In Edward Bidwell Wilson's view, Gibbs was not an advertiser for personal renown nor a propagandist for science; he was a scholar, scion of an old scholarly family, living before the days when research had become ré search ... Gibbs was not a freak, he had no striking ways, he
15974-460: The general public. American abolitionists were cheered by the decision in Somerset v Stewart (1772), which prohibited slavery in the United Kingdom, though not in its colonies. In 1774, the influential Fairfax Resolves called for an end to the "wicked, cruel and unnatural" Atlantic slave trade . One of the first articles advocating the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery
16137-459: The ideal of the unselfish, Christian gentleman. In the minds of those who knew him, the greatness of his intellectual achievements will never overshadow the beauty and dignity of his life. Gibbs's papers from the 1870s introduced the idea of expressing the internal energy U of a system in terms of the entropy S , in addition to the usual state variables of volume V , pressure p , and temperature T . He also introduced
16300-472: The interest of simplicity and to facilitate teaching. In his Yale classroom notes he defined distinct dot and cross products for pairs of vectors and introduced the now common notation for them. Through the 1901 textbook Vector Analysis prepared by E. B. Wilson from Gibbs notes, he was largely responsible for the development of the vector calculus techniques still used today in electrodynamics and fluid mechanics. Thermodynamics Thermodynamics
16463-453: The internal energy, d U , of a closed system in the form where T is the absolute temperature , p is the pressure, d S is an infinitesimal change in entropy and d V is an infinitesimal change of volume. The last term is the sum, over all the chemical species in a chemical reaction, of the chemical potential, μ i , of the i -th species, multiplied by the infinitesimal change in the number of moles, d N i of that species. By taking
16626-526: The journal had few readers capable of understanding Gibbs's work, he shared reprints with correspondents in Europe and received an enthusiastic response from James Clerk Maxwell at Cambridge . Maxwell even made, with his own hands, a clay model illustrating Gibbs's construct . He then produced two plaster casts of his model and mailed one to Gibbs. That cast is on display at the Yale physics department. Maxwell included
16789-472: The macroscopic, bulk properties of materials that can be observed on the human scale, thereby explaining classical thermodynamics as a natural result of statistics, classical mechanics, and quantum theory at the microscopic level. Chemical thermodynamics is the study of the interrelation of energy with chemical reactions or with a physical change of state within the confines of the laws of thermodynamics . The primary objective of chemical thermodynamics
16952-436: The measurements of the specific heats of both solids and gases, and he argued that this was evidence of the danger of basing thermodynamics on "hypotheses about the constitution of matter". Gibbs's own framework for statistical mechanics, based on ensembles of macroscopically indistinguishable microstates , could be carried over almost intact after the discovery that the microscopic laws of nature obey quantum rules, rather than
17115-434: The mechanical theories of Lord Kelvin and others. In his work on optics, just as much as in his work on thermodynamics, Gibbs deliberately avoided speculating about the microscopic structure of matter and purposefully confined his research problems to those that can be solved from broad general principles and experimentally confirmed facts. The methods that he used were highly original and the obtained results showed decisively
17278-509: The new Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland offered him a position paying $ 3,000 per year. In response, Yale offered him an annual salary of $ 2,000, which he was content to accept. In 1879, Gibbs derived the Gibbs–Appell equation of motion , rediscovered in 1900 by Paul Émile Appell . From 1880 to 1884, Gibbs worked on developing the exterior algebra of Hermann Grassmann into
17441-423: The only time that Gibbs spent outside New Haven. He joined Yale's College Church (a Congregational church ) at the end of his freshman year and remained a regular attendant for the rest of his life. Gibbs generally voted for the Republican candidate in presidential elections but, like other " Mugwumps ", his concern over the growing corruption associated with machine politics led him to support Grover Cleveland ,
17604-409: The opinion of biographers, Gibbs's principal mentor and champion, both at Yale and in the Connecticut Academy, was probably the astronomer and mathematician Hubert Anson Newton , a leading authority on meteors , who remained Gibbs's lifelong friend and confidant. After the death of his father in 1861, Gibbs inherited enough money to make him financially independent. Recurrent pulmonary trouble ailed
17767-527: The organization of Wesleyan Methodist Connection by Orange Scott in 1843, and the formation of the Free Methodist Church by Benjamin Titus Roberts in 1860 (which is reflected in the name of Church). The True Wesleyan a periodical founded by Orange Scott and Jotham Horton was used to disseminate abolitionist views. The Methodist and Quaker branches of Christianity played an integral part in
17930-498: The other laws. The first, second, and third laws had been explicitly stated already, and found common acceptance in the physics community before the importance of the zeroth law for the definition of temperature was realized. As it was impractical to renumber the other laws, it was named the zeroth law . The first law of thermodynamics states: In a process without transfer of matter, the change in internal energy , Δ U {\displaystyle \Delta U} , of
18093-536: The other states north of Maryland began gradual abolition of slavery between 1781 and 1804, based on the Pennsylvania model and by 1804, all the Northern states had passed laws to gradually or immediately abolish it. Some slaves continued in involuntary, unpaid "indentured servitude" for two more decades, and others were moved south and sold to new owners in slave states . Some individual slaveholders, particularly in
18256-561: The paper " On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances " (1874–1878) is now regarded as a landmark in the development of chemistry . In it, Gibbs developed a rigorous mathematical theory for various transport phenomena , including adsorption , electrochemistry , and the Marangoni effect in fluid mixtures. He also formulated the phase rule for the number F of variables that may be independently controlled in an equilibrium mixture of C components existing in P phases . The phase rule
18419-485: The perspective of the slave, recognizing their agency and subsequent humanity as cause for self-liberation. Slave revolts following the Stono Rebellion were a present mode of abolition undertaken by slaves and were an indicator of black agency that brewed beneath the surface of the abolitionist movement for decades and eventually sprouted later on through figures such as Frederick Douglass, an escaped black freeman who
18582-509: The politics of prominent elite abolitionists such as industrialist Arthur Tappan and his evangelist brother Lewis . While the former pair opposed slavery on a basis of solidarity of "wage slaves" with "chattel slaves", the Whiggish Tappans strongly rejected this view, opposing the characterization of Northern workers as "slaves" in any sense. (Lott, 129–130) Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting
18745-424: The primary advocates for the opposition to slavery and the slave trade, doing so on the basis of humanitarian ethics. Still, others such as James Oglethorpe , the founder of the colony of Georgia , also retained political motivations for the removal of slavery. Prohibiting slavery through the 1735 Georgia Experiment in part to prevent Spanish partnership with Georgia's runaway slaves, Oglethorpe eventually revoked
18908-469: The problems later. This change was in many cases sudden, a consequence of the individual's coming in direct contact with the horrors of American slavery, or hearing of them from a credible source. As it was put by Amos Adams Lawrence , who witnessed the capture and return to slavery of Anthony Burns , "we went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists." The American beginning of abolitionism as
19071-399: The process by which the system arrived at its state. They are called intensive variables or extensive variables according to how they change when the size of the system changes. The properties of the system can be described by an equation of state which specifies the relationship between these variables. State may be thought of as the instantaneous quantitative description of a system with
19234-407: The rates of approach to thermodynamic equilibrium, and thermodynamics does not deal with such rates. The many versions of the second law all express the general irreversibility of the transitions involved in systems approaching thermodynamic equilibrium. In macroscopic thermodynamics, the second law is a basic observation applicable to any actual thermodynamic process; in statistical thermodynamics,
19397-526: The rebellion saw European indentured servants and African people (of indentured, enslaved , and free negroes ) band together against William Berkeley because of his refusal to fully remove Native American tribes in the region. At the time, Native Americans in the region were hosting raids against lower-class settlers encroaching on their land after the Third Powhatan War (1644–1646), which left many white and black indentured servants and slaves without
19560-496: The revolt intended to reach Spanish-controlled Florida to attain freedom, but their plans were thwarted by white colonists in Charlestown, South Carolina. The event resulted in 25 colonists and 35 to 50 African slaves killed, as well as the implementation of the 1740 Negro Act to prevent another slave uprising. In her book, "The Slave's Cause" by Manisha Sinha, Sinha considers the Stono Rebellion to be an important act of abolition from
19723-507: The role of entropy in the process of chemical reactions and has provided the bulk of expansion and knowledge of the field. Other formulations of thermodynamics emerged. Statistical thermodynamics , or statistical mechanics, concerns itself with statistical predictions of the collective motion of particles from their microscopic behavior. In 1909, Constantin Carathéodory presented a purely mathematical approach in an axiomatic formulation,
19886-459: The root δύναμις dynamis , meaning "power". In 1849, the adjective thermo-dynamic is used by William Thomson. In 1854, the noun thermo-dynamics is used by Thomson and William Rankine to represent the science of generalized heat engines. Pierre Perrot claims that the term thermodynamics was coined by James Joule in 1858 to designate the science of relations between heat and power, however, Joule never used that term, but used instead
20049-400: The same temperature , it is not necessary to bring them into contact and measure any changes of their observable properties in time. The law provides an empirical definition of temperature, and justification for the construction of practical thermometers. The zeroth law was not initially recognized as a separate law of thermodynamics, as its basis in thermodynamical equilibrium was implied in
20212-425: The same period) and described the Gibbs phenomenon in the theory of Fourier analysis. In 1863, Yale University awarded Gibbs the first American doctorate in engineering . After a three-year sojourn in Europe, Gibbs spent the rest of his career at Yale, where he was a professor of mathematical physics from 1871 until his death in 1903. Working in relative isolation, he became the earliest theoretical scientist in
20375-494: The scope of currently known macroscopic thermodynamic methods. Thermodynamics is principally based on a set of four laws which are universally valid when applied to systems that fall within the constraints implied by each. In the various theoretical descriptions of thermodynamics these laws may be expressed in seemingly differing forms, but the most prominent formulations are the following. The zeroth law of thermodynamics states: If two systems are each in thermal equilibrium with
20538-443: The second law is postulated to be a consequence of molecular chaos. The third law of thermodynamics states: As the temperature of a system approaches absolute zero, all processes cease and the entropy of the system approaches a minimum value. This law of thermodynamics is a statistical law of nature regarding entropy and the impossibility of reaching absolute zero of temperature. This law provides an absolute reference point for
20701-492: The sentence of death and prohibited the import of slaves. In 1830, most Americans were, at least in principle, opposed to slavery. However, opponents of slavery deliberated on how to end the institution, as well as what would become of the slaves once they were free. As put in The Philanthropist : "If the chain of slavery can be broken, ... we may cherish the hope ... that proper means will be devised for
20864-599: The slaves of masters who failed to register them with the state, along with the "future children" of enslaved mothers. Those enslaved in Pennsylvania before the 1780 law went into effect were not freed until 1847. Massachusetts took a much more radical position. In 1780, during the Revolution, Massachusetts ratified its constitution and included within it a clause that declared all men equal. Based upon this clause, several freedom suits were filed by enslaved African Americans living in Massachusetts. In 1783, its Supreme Court, in
21027-624: The statistics of ensembles of all possible physical states of a system composed of many particles. He introduced the concept of " phase of a mechanical system ". He used the concept to define the microcanonical , canonical , and grand canonical ensembles ; all related to the Gibbs measure , thus obtaining a more general formulation of the statistical properties of many-particle systems than Maxwell and Boltzmann had achieved before him. Gibbs generalized Boltzmann's statistical interpretation of entropy S {\displaystyle S} by defining
21190-407: The surface of the case and a second fixed imaginary boundary across the exhaust nozzle. Generally, thermodynamics distinguishes three classes of systems, defined in terms of what is allowed to cross their boundaries: As time passes in an isolated system, internal differences of pressures, densities, and temperatures tend to even out. A system in which all equalizing processes have gone to completion
21353-486: The system arrived at its state. A traditional version of the second law of thermodynamics states: Heat does not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a hotter body. The second law refers to a system of matter and radiation, initially with inhomogeneities in temperature, pressure, chemical potential, and other intensive properties , that are due to internal 'constraints', or impermeable rigid walls, within it, or to externally imposed forces. The law observes that, when
21516-470: The system boundary are possible, but matter transfer is not possible), Q {\displaystyle Q} denotes the quantity of energy supplied to the system as heat, and W {\displaystyle W} denotes the amount of thermodynamic work done by the system on its surroundings. An equivalent statement is that perpetual motion machines of the first kind are impossible; work W {\displaystyle W} done by
21679-448: The system is isolated from the outside world and from those forces, there is a definite thermodynamic quantity, its entropy , that increases as the constraints are removed, eventually reaching a maximum value at thermodynamic equilibrium, when the inhomogeneities practically vanish. For systems that are initially far from thermodynamic equilibrium, though several have been proposed, there is known no general physical principle that determines
21842-859: The system. A central aim in equilibrium thermodynamics is: given a system in a well-defined initial equilibrium state, and given its surroundings, and given its constitutive walls, to calculate what will be the final equilibrium state of the system after a specified thermodynamic operation has changed its walls or surroundings. Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is a branch of thermodynamics that deals with systems that are not in thermodynamic equilibrium . Most systems found in nature are not in thermodynamic equilibrium because they are not in stationary states, and are continuously and discontinuously subject to flux of matter and energy to and from other systems. The thermodynamic study of non-equilibrium systems requires more general concepts than are dealt with by equilibrium thermodynamics. Many natural systems still today remain beyond
22005-462: The term perfect thermo-dynamic engine in reference to Thomson's 1849 phraseology. The study of thermodynamical systems has developed into several related branches, each using a different fundamental model as a theoretical or experimental basis, or applying the principles to varying types of systems. Classical thermodynamics is the description of the states of thermodynamic systems at near-equilibrium, that uses macroscopic, measurable properties. It
22168-570: The top of his class. He remained at Yale as a graduate student at the Sheffield Scientific School . At age 19, soon after his graduation from college, Gibbs was inducted into the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences , a scholarly institution composed primarily of members of the Yale faculty. Relatively few documents from the period survive and it is difficult to reconstruct the details of Gibbs's early career with precision. In
22331-455: The transatlantic slave trade by 1798. South Carolina , which had abolished the slave trade in 1787, reversed that decision in 1803. In the American South , freedom suits were rejected by the courts, which held that the rights in the state constitutions did not apply to African Americans . The formation of Christian denominations that heralded abolitionism as a moral issue occurred, such as
22494-473: The vectorial approach over the quaternionic calculus of William Rowan Hamilton , which was then widely used by British scientists. This led him, in the early 1890s, to a controversy with Peter Guthrie Tait and others in the pages of Nature . Gibbs's lecture notes on vector calculus were privately printed in 1881 and 1884 for the use of his students, and were later adapted by Edwin Bidwell Wilson into
22657-427: The wall, then where U 0 denotes the internal energy of the combined system, and U 1 and U 2 denote the internal energies of the respective separated systems. Adapted for thermodynamics, this law is an expression of the principle of conservation of energy , which states that energy can be transformed (changed from one form to another), but cannot be created or destroyed. Internal energy
22820-457: The wife of American founding father Roger Sherman ; and he was the second cousin of Roger Sherman Baldwin , see the Amistad case below. The elder Gibbs was generally known to his family and colleagues as "Josiah", while the son was called "Willard". Josiah Gibbs was a linguist and theologian who served as professor of sacred literature at Yale Divinity School from 1824 until his death in 1861. He
22983-673: The word. Passed unanimously by the Congress of the Confederation in 1787, the Northwest Ordinance forbade slavery in the Northwest Territory , a vast area (the future Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin) in which slavery had been legal, but population was sparse. The first state to begin a gradual abolition of slavery was Pennsylvania, in 1780. All importation of slaves was prohibited, but none were freed at first, only
23146-505: The world's first vacuum pump and demonstrated a vacuum using his Magdeburg hemispheres . Guericke was driven to make a vacuum to disprove Aristotle 's long-held supposition that 'nature abhors a vacuum'. Shortly after Guericke, the Anglo-Irish physicist and chemist Robert Boyle had learned of Guericke's designs and, in 1656, in coordination with English scientist Robert Hooke , built an air pump. Using this pump, Boyle and Hooke noticed
23309-471: The young Gibbs and his physicians were concerned that he might be susceptible to tuberculosis , which had killed his mother. He also suffered from astigmatism , whose treatment was then still largely unfamiliar to oculists , so that Gibbs had to diagnose himself and grind his own lenses. Though in later years he used glasses only for reading or other close work, Gibbs's delicate health and imperfect eyesight probably explain why he did not volunteer to fight in
23472-479: Was Lee De Forest , later a pioneer of radio technology. Gibbs died in New Haven on April 28, 1903, at the age of 64, the victim of an acute intestinal obstruction. A funeral was conducted two days later at his home on 121 High Street, and his body was buried in the nearby Grove Street Cemetery . In May, Yale organized a memorial meeting at the Sloane Laboratory. The eminent British physicist J. J. Thomson
23635-551: Was Maxwell, and now he is dead." Gibbs then extended his thermodynamic analysis to multi-phase chemical systems (i.e., to systems composed of more than one form of matter) and considered a variety of concrete applications. He described that research in a monograph titled " On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances ", published by the Connecticut Academy in two parts that appeared respectively in 1875 and 1878. That work, which covers about three hundred pages and contains exactly seven hundred numbered mathematical equations, begins with
23798-461: Was Rev. Joshua Leavitt , trained as a lawyer at Yale, who stopped practicing law in order to attend Yale Divinity School , and subsequently edited the abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator and campaigned against slavery, as well as advocating other social reforms. In 1841, Leavitt published The Financial Power of Slavery , which argued that the South was draining the national economy due to its reliance on enslaved workers. In 2007, Duffield Street
23961-723: Was a careful investor and financial manager, and at his death in 1903 his estate was valued at $ 100,000 (roughly $ 3.39 million today). For many years, he served as trustee, secretary, and treasurer of his alma mater, the Hopkins School. US President Chester A. Arthur appointed him as one of the commissioners to the National Conference of Electricians, which convened in Philadelphia in September 1884, and Gibbs presided over one of its sessions. A keen and skilled horseman, Gibbs
24124-445: Was a kindly dignified gentleman. According to Lynde Wheeler , who had been Gibbs's student at Yale, in his later years Gibbs was always neatly dressed, usually wore a felt hat on the street, and never exhibited any of the physical mannerisms or eccentricities sometimes thought to be inseparable from genius ... His manner was cordial without being effusive and conveyed clearly the innate simplicity and sincerity of his nature. He
24287-632: Was a popular orator and essayist for the abolitionist cause. The struggle between Georgia and South Carolina led to the first debates in Parliament over the issue of slavery, occurring between 1740 and 1742. Rhode Island Quakers, associated with Moses Brown , were among the first in America to free slaves. Benjamin Rush was another leader, as were many Quakers. John Woolman gave up most of his business in 1756 to devote himself to campaigning against slavery along with other Quakers. Between 1764 and 1774, seventeen enslaved African Americans appeared before
24450-402: Was also attacked, to a lesser degree, as harmful on economic grounds. Evidence was that the South, with many enslaved African Americans on plantations , was definitely poorer than the North, which had few. The institution remained solid in the South, and that region's customs and social beliefs evolved into a strident defense of slavery in response to the rise of a growing anti-slavery stance in
24613-421: Was an event of the first importance in the history of chemistry ... Nevertheless it was a number of years before its value was generally known, this delay was due largely to the fact that its mathematical form and rigorous deductive processes make it difficult reading for anyone, and especially so for students of experimental chemistry whom it most concerns. Gibbs continued to work without pay until 1880, when
24776-567: Was given the name Abolitionist Place , and the Truesdells' home at 227 Duffield received landmark status in 2021. Abolitionists nationwide were outraged by the murder of white abolitionist and journalist Elijah Parish Lovejoy by a proslavery mob in Alton, Illinois on 7 November 1837. Six months later, Pennsylvania Hall , an abolitionist venue in Philadelphia , was burnt to the ground by another proslavery mob on May 17, 1838. Both events contributed to
24939-587: Was hired without salary. Gibbs published his first work in 1873. His papers on the geometric representation of thermodynamic quantities appeared in the Transactions of the Connecticut Academy . These papers introduced the use of different type phase diagrams, which were his favorite aids to the imagination process when doing research, rather than the mechanical models, such as the ones that Maxwell used in constructing his electromagnetic theory, which might not completely represent their corresponding phenomena. Although
25102-565: Was in attendance and delivered a brief address. Gibbs never married, living all his life in his childhood home with his sister Julia and her husband Addison Van Name, who was the Yale librarian. Except for his customary summer vacations in the Adirondacks (at Keene Valley, New York ) and later at the White Mountains (in Intervale, New Hampshire ), his sojourn in Europe in 1866–1869 was almost
25265-410: Was its most effective propagandist. Garrison's efforts to recruit eloquent spokesmen led to the discovery of ex-slave Frederick Douglass , who eventually became a prominent activist in his own right. Eventually, Douglass would publish his own widely distributed abolitionist newspaper, North Star . In the early 1850s, the American abolitionist movement split into two camps over the question of whether
25428-681: Was married in Berlin to Addison Van Name , who had been Gibbs's classmate at Yale. The newly married couple returned to New Haven, leaving Gibbs and his sister Anna in Germany. In Heidelberg , Gibbs was exposed to the work of physicists Gustav Kirchhoff and Hermann von Helmholtz , and chemist Robert Bunsen . At the time, German academics were the leading authorities in the natural sciences, especially chemistry and thermodynamics . Gibbs returned to Yale in June 1869 and briefly taught French to engineering students. It
25591-470: Was presented in his highly influential textbook Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics , published in 1902, a year before his death. Gibbs's retiring personality and intense focus on his work limited his accessibility to students. His principal protégé was Edwin Bidwell Wilson, who nonetheless explained that "except in the classroom I saw very little of Gibbs. He had a way, toward the end of
25754-400: Was probably also around this time that he worked on a new design for a steam-engine governor , his last significant investigation in mechanical engineering. In 1871, he was appointed Professor of Mathematical Physics at Yale, the first such professorship in the United States. Gibbs, who had independent means and had yet to publish anything, was assigned to teach graduate students exclusively and
25917-512: Was seen habitually in New Haven driving his sister's carriage . In an obituary published in the American Journal of Science , Gibbs's former student Henry A. Bumstead referred to Gibbs's personal character: Unassuming in manner, genial and kindly in his intercourse with his fellow-men, never showing impatience or irritation, devoid of personal ambition of the baser sort or of the slightest desire to exalt himself, he went far toward realizing
26080-590: Was the Rev. Jonathan Dickinson , the first president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University ). Gibbs's given name, which he shared with his father and several other members of his extended family, derived from his ancestor Josiah Willard, who had been Secretary of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in the 18th century. His paternal grandmother, Mercy (Prescott) Gibbs, was the sister of Rebecca Minot Prescott Sherman,
26243-528: Was to stop slavery within the Quaker community, where 70% of Quakers owned slaves between 1681 and 1705. It acknowledged the universal rights of all people. While the Quaker establishment did not take action at that time, the unusually early, clear, and forceful argument in the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery initiated the spirit that finally led to the end of slavery in the Society of Friends (1776) and in
26406-687: Was written by Thomas Paine . Titled "African Slavery in America", it appeared on 8 March 1775 in the Postscript to the Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser . The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage (Pennsylvania Abolition Society) was the first American abolition society, formed 14 April 1775, in Philadelphia, primarily by Quakers. The society suspended operations during
26569-461: Was written in 1688 by the Religious Society of Friends . On 18 February 1688, Francis Daniel Pastorius , the brothers Derick and Abraham op den Graeff and Gerrit Hendricksz of Germantown, Pennsylvania , drafted the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery , a two-page condemnation of slavery, and sent it to the governing bodies of their Quaker church. The intention of the document
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