J. J. Thomson
Neither Josiah Willard Gibbs nor William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) derived the Gibbs–Thomson equation. Also, although many sources claim that British physicist J. J. Thomson derived the Gibbs–Thomson equation in 1888, he did not. Early in the 20th century, investigators derived precursors of the Gibbs–Thomson equation. However, in 1920, the Gibbs–Thomson equation was first derived in its modern form by two researchers working independently: Friedrich Meissner, a student of the Estonian-German physical chemist Gustav Tammann, and Ernst Rie (1896–1921), an Austrian physicist at the University of Vienna. These early investigators did not call the relation the "Gibbs–Thomson" equation. That name was in use by 1910 or earlier; it originally referred to equations concerning the adsorption of solutes by interfaces between two phases — equations that Gibbs and then J. J. Thomson derived. Hence, in the name "Gibbs–Thomson" equation, "Thomson" refers to J. J. Thomson, not William Thomson (Lord Kelvin).