In thermodynamics, George Ernest Gibson (1884-1959) was a Scottish-born American chemist noted for 1917 English translation of German physical chemist Otto Sackur’s 1912 Textbook on Thermochemistry and Thermodynamics, which was used as the primary teaching textbook in chemical thermodynamics at the Lewis school of thermodynamics, up until the publication of the 1923 Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Substances by Gilbert Lewis and Merle Randall.
Education
Gibson, was the son of John Gibson, a professor of chemistry at the University of Edinburg, the school at which the younger Gibson completed his BS in 1906. Gibson then completed his PhD at the University of Breslau under Otto Lummer in 1911. In 1914, following teaching and research positions at the University of Breslau and the University of Edinburg, Gibson became a chemistry instructor (and later professor) at the University of California, Berkeley, at the time when the chemistry department was being reorganized by American physical chemist Gilbert Lewis in the formation of what eventually came to be known as the Lewis school of thermodynamics.
Gibson's first three research publications (he produced ten before coming to Berkeley) were in the field of organic chemistry, but he soon transferred his major interest to physical chemistry and quantum theory. His work on thallium vapor, published in 1911, was the first conclusive proof that spectral lines are produced by thermal emission.
Lewis, whose major interests were thermodynamics and physical chemistry, placed Gibson in charge of two new honors courses, ‘thermodynamics’ and ‘advanced physical chemistry’. Out of this, Gibson published, in 1917, an English translation of A Textbook of Thermochemistry and Thermodynamics, by Otto Sackur, and this served as a reference text for this subject until 1923, when Lewis and Randall's now-famous Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Substances on chemical thermodynamics appeared.
Gibson's early research in Berkeley followed two main patterns, spectroscopy and low temperature calorimetry. His first applications of spectroscopy were devoted to a study of solutions formed by dissolving alkali and alkaline earth metals in liquid ammonia and methylammine. He also studied the extraordinarily large electrical conductivities of these solutions.
Entropy
In 1917, Gibson published, in collaboration with Lewis, a survey of the entropies of the elements from existing but rather inadequate low temperature calorimetric data. He enlisted three of his graduate students, Wendel M. Latimer, George S. Parks, and William Giauque, in low temperature researches designed to test the validity of this method of evaluating absolute entropies of elements and compounds.
The low temperature calorimetric experiments on ethyl and propyl alcohols and their mixtures (Parks and Latimer) and related work on glycerine glass and crystals (Giauque) showed that the third law of thermodynamics could not be applied to non-crystalline states. These three students of Gibson served as nuclei (Parks at Stanford and Latimer and Giauque at Berkeley) for a rapid spread of low temperature research through their own students. This development put the United States in a leading position in experimental work related to the third law of thermodynamics. Gibson retired in 1954.
References
1. Sackur, Otto. (1917). A Textbook of Thermo-chemistry and Thermodynamics (translted and Revised by G.E. Gibson). MacMillan.
2. Anon. (date). “George Ernest Gibson, Chemistry: Berkeley”, Calisphere.
External links
● George Ernest Gibson – Wikipedia.
