Ames wondered, too, and he returned to Rowland at the end of the year; but Webster stayed, although in my presence he never admitted unreservedly that the Physical Institute in Berlin was very much better than anything they had at Harvard. Webster’s and Ames’s testimony convinced me that the great movement in the United States for higher endeavor in science was making rapid progress; and I longed to finish up my studies in Berlin and return to the United States. After my mother’s death Europe attracted me much less. * * * * * A new physical science was attracting much attention in Germany at that time, the science of physical chemistry. Helmholtz was very much interested in it. I had read his latest papers on the subject and they reminded me of what I had seen in Maxwell’s book on heat about Willard Gibbs of Yale. I soon discovered that the alleged German fathers of the new science were anticipated by Gibbs by at least ten years. Remembering the charge of De Tocqueville that the American democracy had never done anything for abstract science, I made a careful note of my find. It was a clean-cut little discovery, I thought, and Helmholtz admitted it. He suggested even that I might find material in it for a research leading to a doctor dissertation. I embraced the suggestion and started an experimental research, at the same time studying the theories of Gibbs, Helmholtz, and other authorities, mostly German, on physical chemistry. The more one penetrates the depths of any problem the more he yields to the belief that this problem is the most important problem in the world. This happened to me; and the Faraday-Maxwell electromagnetic theory was shelved, temporarily, on account of my interest in physical chemistry, and particularly on account of the prospect of finding there a doctor dissertation, which I finally did.