When Yale demolished Gibbs Research Laboratories in 2017 in order to build a new science building, it left the campus without a place commemorating the life and work of Josiah Willard Gibbs, Class of 1858, ’63PhD, the scientist and Yale professor that Albert Einstein called “the greatest mind in American history.” That’s been rectified with the completion this spring of J. W. Gibbs Court, a redesigned public space on Science Hill near Prospect Street. Appropriately for Gibbs, who did influential work in physics, chemistry, and mathematics, the court is flanked by Sloane Physics Laboratory, Sterling Chemistry Laboratory, and Kline Tower, which now houses the math department.
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Bravo <> I spent some time as an undergrad in the old Gibbs Lab that was later demolished to make way for the Yale Science Building YSB. Both buildings were/are devoted to biology. <> Einstein was right <> I would humbly suggest that the new Physics and Engineering Building taking shape on the footprint of the old Wright Accelerator Lab be named for Gibbs. He is still the most important scientist America has ever produced...and the most modest and self-effacing man to ever change the course of scientific thought.