Birthday of Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839) — Inventing the Language of Vectors

J. Willard Gibbs was born in New Haven, Connecticut on February 11, 1839. Working almost entirely alone at Yale, he invented the modern system of vector analysis — dot product, cross product, gradient, divergence, curl — synthesising the work of Hamilton and Grassmann into a practical calculus for three-dimensional space. Maxwell's equations in their familiar compact form (∇·E = ρ/ε₀, ∇×B = μ₀J + …) are written in Gibbs's notation. He also founded statistical mechanics, deriving thermodynamics from the statistical behaviour of vast numbers of particles and giving entropy a precise probabilistic meaning. He published quietly in an obscure journal; his genius was recognised in Europe before America.