Oliver Wolcott Gibbs


Oliver Wolcott Gibbs was an American chemist. He is known for performing the first electrogravimetric analyses, namely the reductions of copper and nickel ions to their respective metals.

Biography

Oliver Wolcott Gibbs was born in New York City in 1822 to George and Laura Gibbs. His father, Colonel George Gibbs, was an ardent mineralogist; the mineral gibbsite was named after him, and his collection was finally bought by Yale College. Oliver was the younger brother of George Gibbs and older brother to Alfred Gibbs, who became a Union Army Brigadier General during the American Civil War. Alfred Gibbs son, John Blair Gibbs, was the Acting Assistant Surgeon killed in the Battle of Guantánamo Bay during the Spanish–American War.
Entering Columbia College in 1837, Wolcott graduated in 1841. Having assisted Robert Hare at University of Pennsylvania for several months, he next entered the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, qualifying as a doctor of medicine in 1845.
Leaving the United States, Gibbs studied in Germany, considered a center of science, with Karl Friedrich August Rammelsberg, Heinrich Rose, and Justus von Liebig, and in Paris with Auguste Laurent, Jean-Baptiste Dumas, and Henri Victor Regnault.
He returned to the US in 1848 and that year became professor of chemistry at the Free Academy, now the City College of New York. Gibbs was a candidate for Professor of Physical Science at Columbia in 1854, but his application was rejected because he was a Unitarian.
Gibbs became the Rumford professor at Harvard University in 1863, a post he held until his retirement in 1887 as professor emeritus. After retirement, he moved to Newport, Rhode Island, where he worked for about a decade in his own private laboratory.
Gibbs's research was mainly in analytical and inorganic chemistry, especially the cobalt-amines, platinum metals, and complex acids. He published a number of articles related to spectroscopy and the measurement of wavelengths. Gibbs was said to have been an excellent teacher, who also published many articles in scientific journals.
Gibbs was also the founder of The Union League Club in New York City. In 1862 he proposed to fellow Sanitary Commission Executive Committee member Frederick Law Olmsted that a patriotic club be formed in New York City and in January 1863 formally proposed the same to leading men in New York City, resulting in the formation of The Union League Club in February 1863.

Commemorations