Josiah Willard Gibbs, Sr.

Josiah Willard Gibbs Sr. (30 April 1790 – 25 March 1861) was an American linguist and theologian, who served as professor of sacred literature at Yale University. He is remembered mainly for his involvement with the Amistad case and as the father of theoretical physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs.

Early life and education Josiah Gibbs was born in Salem, Massachusetts, Gibbs returned to Yale in 1824 as lecturer in the Theological Institution of Yale College. He was eventually promoted to a professorship at Yale Divinity School's department of sacred literature, a job that he continued to occupy until his death.

Gibbs's most important work, Philological Studies, appeared in 1857. He collaborated with James Gates Percival on a revision of Noah Webster's dictionary, and he compiled vocabularies of the Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic languages, as well as several American Indian languages.

Involvement in the Amistad case Gibbs was an active abolitionist and he played an important role in the Amistad trials of 1839–40. By visiting the African passengers in jail and showing them piles of pennies, he was able to learn to count to ten in the language spoken by most of them, which was determined to be Mende. Gibbs then strolled around the harbors in New Haven and New York City, counting aloud from one to ten in the words he had learned from the Africans. In this way he eventually met two British sailors, James Covey (a former slave) and Charles Pratt, who recognized the words and could serve as interpreters. The sailors also taught some Mende to Gibbs and to fellow Yale professor George E. Day, enabling them to converse with at least 20 of the captives.

Gibbs and Day testified as expert witnesses during the trial, establishing that the claim by the owners of the Amistad ship that the black passengers were slaves born in Cuba was false. Gibbs later compiled and published vocabularies on Mende and other West African languages. Both father and son died in New Haven and are buried in Grove Street Cemetery there. Although their official given names were the same, the father was generally known as Josiah Gibbs and the son as Willard Gibbs.

Josiah Gibbs's son-in-law, Addison Van Name, served as the librarian of Yale University from 1865 until 1904.

In popular culture Gibbs was portrayed by Austin Pendleton in the 1997 movie Amistad, directed by Steven Spielberg.