“My title could just as aptly have been: ‘The Gibbs Circle in Economics’. It would of course have begun in New Haven with Irving Fisher at its epicenter. Edwin Wilson, Gibbs’ last protégé, transported his tradition to MIT and Harvard. Lawrence Henderson, Harvard physiologist turned philosopher and zealot for Pareto’s sociology, was not quite an economist but he did proselytized for Gibbsian equilibrium in blood and elites. Wilson was my master, first among equals. Through his lineage I could claim Gibbs as my grandfather; and when my first PhD student Lawrence Klein came to generalize the Le Chatelier’s principle to quadratic forms of statistical variances, this Nobelist could claim rights to the apostolic succession.”