Transactions of the Connecticut Academy

Pickford, G.G., Grant, F.B. and Umminger, B.L. (1969). Studies on the blood serum of the euryhaline cyprinodont fish, Fundulus heteroclitus, adapted to fresh or to salt water. Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 43,25-70. 

Due in part to his mathematically demanding and abstract style of writing, and also since his papers were published in the obscure Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Gibbs s work was not immediately embraced by the scientific community, with the notable exception of the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell. Consequently, many of Gibbs s results were not discovered until years or decades later by scientists ignorant of his work. 

Trans. Connect. Acad. Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, New Haven. 

Scientists of a retiring disposition who make important discoveries, but pubHsh them in journals of limited circulation, tend to be overlooked in their own day and receive appreciation only after they have died, when their innovations have been rediscovered. The work of Willard Gibbs (1839-1903) at Yale University on chemical thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, published in the Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Sciences, was approved by Clerk Maxwell in 1875, but little known to others in Europe at the time. Yet the Gibbs Free Energy function and the Gibbs equations became standard in chemical thermodynamics student courses from the 1920s onwards. Chemists who work on non-standard topics receive... 

Gibbs, J. W, On the equilibrium of heterogeneous substances. Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Sciences. (1878) In The Scientific Papers of J. Willard Gibbs. Vol. 1., Thermodynamics, p. 320. Longmans Green London (1906). 

Gibbs, J. W., 1878. On the equilibrium of heterogeneous substances. Transactions of the Connecticut Academy 3, 343-524. 

Gibbs, J.W. (1873). A method of geometrical representation of thermodynamic properties of substances by means of surfaces. In W. R. Longley R. G. Van Name (Eds.), Gibbs collected works. New York Longmans, Green, 1931), Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences (Vol. 2, pp. 382-404). 

The result of all this work was the production of a new repertoire of tools for chemists, engineers, and theorists alike. The only problem was that it did not immediately reach the people who could make use of it. The work was presented in such a cryptic mathematical format that people did not understand what they were reading, and it was also published in an obscure journal. Transactions of the Connecticut Academy, which reached Europe by slow boat, if at all. However it did reach an important few, one of whom was the productive and respected James Clerk Maxwell, who we meet now and will meet again. 

As usual, the superscript (°) indicates the standard state, or the state in which the substance is stable at 25°C and 1 atm pressure. Josiah W. Gibbs (1839-1903), after whom this function is named, published the principles which subsequently found widespread application to the study of chemical equilibria in the rather obscure Transactions of the Connecticut Academy in 1878. They were ignored for some years. 

In 1873, when he was 34, the first two of Gibbs s remarkable papers on theoretical thermodynamics appeared in an obscure journal. Transactions of the Connecticut Academy f These papers explored relations among state functions using two- and three-dimensional geometrical constractions. 

Gibbs published his work in the Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Sciences, a journal that was not widely read. This work of Gibbs remained in relative obscurity until it was translated into German by Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932) in 1892 and into French by Henry-Louis Le Chatelier (1850-1936) in 1899 [1]. Much of present-day equilibrium thermodynamics can be traced back to this important work of Gibbs. 

Admittedly, Gibbs himself was largely responsible for the fact that for many years his work did not attract the attention it deserved. He made little effort to publicize it the Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Sciences was hardly the leading scientific journal of its day. Gibbs was one of those rare individuals who seem to have no inner need for recognition... 

Gibbs, 1873b] J. W. Gibbs. A Method of Geometrical Representation of the Thermodynamics Properties of Substances by Means of Surfaces, Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 2 382-404. Rpt. in Gibbs (1906), 1, pp. 33-54, 1973. 

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