Wikipedia:Peer review/Josiah Willard Gibbs/archive1

Josiah Willard Gibbs

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it was promoted to GA status a month ago, and I would like to submit it for FA status in the near future. Before and during the GA review, I put in a lot of work into improving the discussion of Gibbs's life and work, and providing adequate references. Since it was promoted to GA status, I have done some more minor work, especially on improving the images.

Thanks, Eb.hoop (talk) 00:14, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Comments by A. Parrot

Interesting subject. I'm an American, but I don't believe I've heard of Gibbs before, even though I know of many of the non-Americans he worked with. He comes across as a sort of scientific monk, which somehow seems a very New England-ish thing to be.

Dear A. Parrot: Many thanks for taking a look at this. The people who knew him generally insisted that Gibbs was an old-fashioned Yankee gentleman, reserved but kindly and not eccentric. Your comment reminded me of something that E. B. Wilson wrote, which I've now added to the article: "He was a scholar, scion of an old scholarly family, living before the days when research had become résearch." - Eb.hoop (talk) 21:08, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

The article looks good, at least to this non-scientist. Solidly referenced, decently written, and thorough. I saw a bunch of minor issues, mostly details in the prose, which I've listed below. If those are addressed, I think it's ready for FAC.

• One general note: if Gibbs' bust is still standing on the Yale campus, it would be nice to have a photograph of it. But I just did an image search and can't find one online, and I'm guessing you can't either.

There's a bronze bas-relief by Lee Lawrie, mentioned in the article, which was originally in the Sloane Physics Lab and which I think was moved to the Gibbs Lab when it opened. There's a picture of it in Wheeler's bio, but the only photo I can find of it online is this one. It'd be nice to have in the article. Can a picture of a public bas-relief like this one be claimed to be in the public domain? - Eb.hoop (talk) 21:08, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

• The second paragraph of the lead has citations, but the first has none. Of course, a lead section doesn't need citations if the lead text is supported in the body. I assume that the Einstein quotations and the Copley Medal statement are your reason for citing the whole second paragraph, which makes sense (to me, effective quotations are one of the few things that are worth including in the lead but not the body). But in that case, I think it would feel cleaner to have citations throughout the lead.

I thought about it for a bit, but I don't feel that citations in the first paragraph would be particularly helpful. The quote by Einstein in the second paragraph should definitely have a citation, and I'm inclined to the keep the ones about the Copley Medal. But the fact that he got the first PhD in engineering in the US is documented later in the article, so that citation could be removed from the lead. - Eb.hoop (talk) 21:08, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

• The first sentence in the body, with all its parenthetical clauses, is a bit awkward. (I'm guilty of writing that kind of sentence myself.) I suggest just stating Gibbs' family in the first sentence and moving the elder Gibbs' occupation into a new sentence: "The father was a linguist and theologian who was professor of sacred literature at Yale Divinity School from 1824 to 1861. He was also an abolitionist and is now remembered chiefly…"  Done

• "Gibbs's principal mentor and champion appears to have been the astronomer Hubert Anson Newton…" When reading this, I wondered why "appears" is needed; it feels rather mysterious for something that happened in such a well-documented time and place. The subject might bear a little more elaboration, if possible.

There's no correspondence, or other actual records. That Newton was probably the one who helped promote Gibbs in the Connecticut Academy and at Yale is just a plausible inference by Wheeler. - Eb.hoop (talk) 21:08, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

• "…received a particularly favorable response from Maxwell…" Maxwell hasn't been mentioned since the article lead, so I would write out his full name again.  Done

• The linked phrase "plaster casts illustrating Gibbs's construct" comes close to being an easter egg link, especially as the real article title, Maxwell's thermodynamic surface, is mentioned in an intrusive parenthetical comment in the section about the stamp. Perhaps write something like: "…Maxwell, who made three plaster casts, now known as Maxwell's thermodynamic surface, illustrating Gibbs's construct with his own hands. Maxwell mailed one model to Gibbs, and it is still on display at the Yale physics department." And I would consider removing the parenthetical comment in the stamp section.  Done

• The names of J. J. O'Connor and E. F. Robertson may be written without periods on the web page they wrote, but leaving the periods out clashes with the abbreviation rules in American English (which applies to this article) and in other parts of this article. (Many British style guides eliminate periods after name initials, but the practice isn't universal even there.)  Done

• "In the course of this effort, Gibbs introduced the concept of dyadics and he sought to convince other physicists of the convenience of his approach over the quaternionic calculus of William Rowan Hamilton, which was then in widespread use by British scientists. This led, in the early 1890s, to a controversy with Peter Guthrie Tait and others in the pages of Nature." Here there are some problems with vagueness. One is that mathematically ignorant readers, like me, have to click on the links to see clearly that vector calculus, and not dyadics, was meant to replace quaternions. How about "In the course of this effort, Gibbs introduced the concept of dyadics. He also sought to convince other physicists that vector calculus was more convenient than the quaternionic calculus developed by William Rowan Hamilton, leading to a controversy with Peter Guthrie Tait and others in the pages of Nature in the early 1890s."  Done

• "acute intestinal obstruction" For this article it's a minor detail, but when seeing this phrase I did wonder what caused the obstruction, as I don't know what usually causes such things. You may not know what caused Gibbs' obstruction (the cited source doesn't say) but it might be worth linking intestinal obstruction so people can see what the common causes are.

The cause is unknown, and the onset appears to have been sudden. There's some disagreement about whether Gibbs had shown signs of decline or not before he grew ill and died, and about whether he had been affected by the strain of finishing his textbook on statistical mechanics. - Eb.hoop (talk) 21:08, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

• "…thus obtaining a more general formulation of the statistical properties of many-particle systems than what had been achieved previously by Maxwell and Boltzmann." No need for the passive voice here; just say "than Maxwell and Boltzmann had previously achieved."  Done

• Lynde Wheeler is linked four times (in "Personal life and character", "Scientific recognition", "Influence", and "In literature"). Repeat links can show up in the article body, but only when they're far apart. The last three Wheeler links are fairly close together, so I'd eliminate the last two. Also, the description of Wheeler as Gibbs' former student only appears the last time his name comes up; move that to the first mention of him.  Done

• "the birefringence of Iceland spar, an optical phenomenon investigated by Gibbs." Passive voice again; "an optical phenomenon that Gibbs investigated" feels more straightforward even if it's slightly longer.  Done

• I don't know all of the referencing styles that FAC generally accepts, but it strikes me as odd to have a "Bibliography" section, containing both works by Gibbs and works about him, many of which are used as sources for the article. (And all the details of a cited work are given, right down to ISBN numbers, every time they show up in the reference list. You might want to use a shortened form for repeat references.) It's more typical to put cited sources in the "References" section or an independent "Works cited", to put sources on the subject that aren't used in the article in a "Further reading", and reserve "Bibliography" for works written by the article subject (see Wikipedia:Layout#Notes_and_References). I don't mean to dictate, though, as FAC allows a lot of freedom with reference formats.

I think that the Bibliography is OK at it is, since it lists both Gibbs's own published work and important commentaries or biographies by others, only some of which are used as references in the body of the article, but which an interested reader might wish to consult. I do think that the references themselves should use a shortened form when they refer to a work in the Bibliography, or when they are repeated. I will work on that in the next few days, time permitting. - Eb.hoop (talk) 21:08, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

—A. Parrot (talk) 23:57, 12 August 2012 (UTC)