(1903-1992), neurologist

Frederic Andrew Gibbs was born on 9 February 1903 in Baltimore, Maryland. He was educated at Yale University before qualifying in medicine at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore in 1929. After qualifying, Gibbs took a post at Harvard Medical School, where he joined the team of neurologists William G. Lennox (1884-1960) and Erna Leonhardt (1906-1987). Gibbs and Leonhardt married a year later.

While at Harvard, the team pioneered the use of electroencephalography (EEG, the measurement of the electrical activity of the brain) in the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy. Erna and Frederic Gibbs would also compile the seminal Atlas of Electroencephalography (1941), which identified and described common brainwave patterns.

In 1944, the Gibbses moved from Harvard to the University of Illinois College of Medicine, where they established the Clinic for Epilepsy and Gibbs took up the post of Professor of Neurology. The couple remained at the Clinic until Gibbs’ retirement in 1975.

Gibbs died following a stroke in Northbrook, Illinois on 18 October 1992.