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Willard Gibbs: The Whole Is Simpler than Its Parts
A poet’s lost biography of the forgotten scientist who founded physical chemistry, shaping much of the 20th century—as well as an ingenious and 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. By applying the second law of thermodynamics to chemistry, Gibbs enabled future scientists to predict what states a substance can assume and under what conditions. The implications for industry, agriculture, and warfare were vast. For this and other achievements he was hailed by Einstein as “the greatest mind in American history”—yet he remained essentially unknown.
To the 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.” As such, Rukeyser’s thoroughly researched and lyrical tribute to Gibbs is much more than a traditional biography. It is an alchemical compound of philosophy, history, ethics, and literature writ large—a monolithic work of homage that is not only the story of a single thinker’s far-reaching legacy, but the story of a country, a century, a global epoch of scientific creativity that would color every realm of the human imagination and aspiration, from poetry to politics.
As the iconic author and critic Maria Popova writes in her introduction, Muriel Rukeyser was remarkable American genius in her own right, who won the Yale Younger Poets Award for her debut poetry collection, Theory of Flight, in her early twenties and composed her staggering, more-than-biography of Gibbs before she was thirty. Both an ingenious celebration of the creative spark that burns through boundaries and a gorgeous ode to a forgotten man that was itself forgotten, the Marginalian Editions reissue of Willard Gibbs offers readers a transformative window into two of the most fearlessly original minds in American history.
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. By applying the second law of thermodynamics to chemistry, Gibbs enabled future scientists to predict what states a substance can assume and under what conditions. The implications for industry, agriculture, and warfare were vast. For this and other achievements he was hailed by Einstein as “the greatest mind in American history”—yet he remained essentially unknown.
To the 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.” As such, Rukeyser’s thoroughly researched and lyrical tribute to Gibbs is much more than a traditional biography. It is an alchemical compound of philosophy, history, ethics, and literature writ large—a monolithic work of homage that is not only the story of a single thinker’s far-reaching legacy, but the story of a country, a century, a global epoch of scientific creativity that would color every realm of the human imagination and aspiration, from poetry to politics.
As the iconic author and critic Maria Popova writes in her introduction, Muriel Rukeyser was remarkable American genius in her own right, who won the Yale Younger Poets Award for her debut poetry collection, Theory of Flight, in her early twenties and composed her staggering, more-than-biography of Gibbs before she was thirty. Both an ingenious celebration of the creative spark that burns through boundaries and a gorgeous ode to a forgotten man that was itself forgotten, the Marginalian Editions reissue of Willard Gibbs offers readers a transformative window into two of the most fearlessly original minds in American history.
464 pages, Hardcover
Published April 22, 2025
14 people are currently reading
206 people want to read
About the author
Muriel Rukeyser
83 books156 followersMuriel Rukeyser was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism. Kenneth Rexroth said that she was the greatest poet of her "exact generation".
One of her most powerful pieces was a group of poems entitled The Book of the Dead (1938), documenting the details of the Hawk's Nest incident, an industrial disaster in which hundreds of miners died of silicosis.
Her poem "To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century" (1944), on the theme of Judaism as a gift, was adopted by the American Reform and Reconstructionist movements for their prayer books, something Rukeyser said "astonished" her, as she had remained distant from Judaism throughout her early life.
One of her most powerful pieces was a group of poems entitled The Book of the Dead (1938), documenting the details of the Hawk's Nest incident, an industrial disaster in which hundreds of miners died of silicosis.
Her poem "To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century" (1944), on the theme of Judaism as a gift, was adopted by the American Reform and Reconstructionist movements for their prayer books, something Rukeyser said "astonished" her, as she had remained distant from Judaism throughout her early life.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
dnf
May 22, 2025Sad to DNF this one :( A regular at my bookstore and an expert on the field pointed out more than a couple factual errors, and I wasn't enjoying the writing enough to stick with it anyways. Functionally, I'm sure my inability to trust a writer at face value is a good thing, but for some reason this book elucidated a certain sadness that accompanies it. Oh to once again be gullible in the presence of beautiful words!
Read
August 10, 2025Nothing has ever taken me longer to get through. Fascinating and utterly stultifying. Worst proofreading i have seen, too.
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War is made by imagination, and the peace that follows is made in the same way.
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War is made by imagination, and the peace that follows is made in the same way.
June 21, 2025
A very strange book.
Willard Gibbs is the genius of the 19th century that you have never heard of, whose work on the fundamental theories of thermodynamics are essential to a huge range of discoveries from rubber to explosive, yet who hid his lamp under a lead-lined bushel. A fascinating, one-of-a-kind read about a truly exceptional man with infinite gifts and apparently no personality to speak of.
The author, Muriel Rukeyser, on the other hand, just oozes personality. Verbose and repetitive at times, cryptically poetic at others, she has crafted a lyrical work about a deeply up lyrical man and subject. In this fashion, she created something new, in 1945, that still reads as unique and powerful.
Rukeyser writes beautifully, and exposes history and connections among the great men of the American intellectual and scientific explosion of the 19th century, including Henry Adams, William James, a touch of Emerson, Melville, Hawthorne and more. Some of the connections she makes are flights of fancy, but it is still a strangely compelling story.
I have no idea whom I would recommend this book to, perhaps to anyone who reads “The Marginalian,” whose author created this edition and whose style of prose poetry and free association is similar. But I do hope it finds its readers.
Willard Gibbs is the genius of the 19th century that you have never heard of, whose work on the fundamental theories of thermodynamics are essential to a huge range of discoveries from rubber to explosive, yet who hid his lamp under a lead-lined bushel. A fascinating, one-of-a-kind read about a truly exceptional man with infinite gifts and apparently no personality to speak of.
The author, Muriel Rukeyser, on the other hand, just oozes personality. Verbose and repetitive at times, cryptically poetic at others, she has crafted a lyrical work about a deeply up lyrical man and subject. In this fashion, she created something new, in 1945, that still reads as unique and powerful.
Rukeyser writes beautifully, and exposes history and connections among the great men of the American intellectual and scientific explosion of the 19th century, including Henry Adams, William James, a touch of Emerson, Melville, Hawthorne and more. Some of the connections she makes are flights of fancy, but it is still a strangely compelling story.
I have no idea whom I would recommend this book to, perhaps to anyone who reads “The Marginalian,” whose author created this edition and whose style of prose poetry and free association is similar. But I do hope it finds its readers.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews