Hildebrand's many scientific papers and chemistry texts include An Introduction to Molecular Kinetic Theory (1963) and Viscosity and Diffusivity (1977).
[7] Hildebrand made several discoveries of which the most notable was the introduction in the mid-1920s of helium and oxygen breathing mixtures to replace air for divers to alleviate the condition known as the bends.
He realized that the problem was caused by nitrogen gas dissolved in blood at high pressure, which was expelled too rapidly on return to the surface.
The American Chemical Society created the Joel Henry Hildebrand Award in his honor for work pertaining to the field of theoretical and experimental chemistry of liquids.
He has been identified by Kantha in 2001, as one of the 35 centenarian scientists who belonged to an unusual cluster that was newly formed in the 20th century.
Hildebrand challenged this popular view in a series of papers[citation needed] in the late 1960s and 1970s and concluded that methane has a just a 40% lower diffusivity in water than in carbon tetrachloride.
This conflict of ideas still exists in the literature with publications between 2000 and 2010 for the clathrate-type hydrophobic hydration still being submitted in computer simulations of various types.
[citation needed] There are papers, however, which cite Hildebrand's earlier criticisms of this model and suggest that hydrophobicity arises from the small size of water increasing the free energy required to develop a suitable cavity for certain solutes to occupy.
[citation needed] With George Scatchard, Hildebrand developed an equation for excess molar volumes in mixtures.