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Full Description
Marginalian Editions presents a groundbreaking poet's biography of the forgotten scientist who founded physical chemistry, shaping much of the 20th century—and an ingenious, expansive treatise on American creativity, character, and remembrance.
Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839-1903) was an American visionary whose work shaped a century of science by bridging classical mechanics and quantum physics. A kindly and shy bachelor who lectured at Yale in relative obscurity for more than thirty years, he single-handedly created the field of physical chemistry without ever completing a single experiment. Gibbs's visionary work enabled future scientists to predict what states a substance can assume and under what conditions—the implications for industry, agriculture, and warfare were vast. Hailed by Einstein as "the greatest mind in American history," Gibbs remained essentially unknown.
To acclaimed poet Muriel Rukeyser, Gibbs "lived closer than any inventor, any poet, any scientific worker in pure imagination to the life of the inventive and organizing spirit in America." Rukeyser's thoroughly researched and lyrical tribute to Gibbs is much more than a biography: it is an alchemical compound of philosophy, history, ethics, and literature writ large. It is the story of a country, a century, a global epoch of scientific creativity that would color every realm of human imagination and aspiration, from poetry to politics.
Contents
Foreword by Maria Popova
1. Introduction: On Presumption
2. The "Amistad" Mutiny
3. New Haven Childhood
4. Science and the Imagination
5. The Education
6. Father and Son
7. The Civil War
8. The Years Abroad
9. Return to America
10. The First Papers
11. A Chair in Mathematical Physics
12. The Great Paper
13. "Mathematics Is a Language"
14. The Rosetta Stone of Science
15. The Shadow and the Factory
16. Three Masters: Melville, Whitman, Gibbs
17. The Imagination of America
18. The Double Democracy
19. Tendencies of History
20. The Long Discovery of Willard Gibbs
Acknowledgments
Five Definitions
Reading List
Sources of Quotations
Index
About the Author and Introducer
