Julian Howard Gibbs (June 24, 1924 – February 20, 1983) was an American physical chemist and the fifteenth President of Amherst College.
In 1942, he entered Amherst College,[1] but had to serve in the United States Navy for a year in the Pacific during World War II.
[1] Gibbs graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst in 1947 and then earned his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in 1949 and 1950 from Princeton University.
Gibbs then worked for eight years at General Electric Company and American Viscose Corporation before accepting a position at Brown University in 1960 as associate professor of chemistry.
[6] They posited that molecular motion must become increasingly cooperative during cooling, requiring larger groups of molecules to move simultaneously, thus decreasing the configurational entropy and creating higher energy barriers.