Josiah Willard Gibbs: The History of a Great Mind

Rating:
Summary: The best, fairly technical biography of Willard Gibbs
Review: Wheeler has written a comprehensive review which goes into considerable detail about Gibbs's scientific accomplishments, without using unnecessarily complicated language or mathematics. As a former student of Gibbs, Wheeler is well-placed to provide a detailed biography of a man of whom he had first-hand experience. But this closeness must raise questions as to how objective this book is: at times the biography might be overly-eulogistic. This book was first published in 1951. What is needed now is a modern, more objective work. Amongst Gibbs's contemporaries, for example, Lords Raleigh and Kelvin were critical of Gibbs's thermodynamics. This is not mentioned by Wheeler.