THIRD son of Mr. Robert Gibson, J.P., Greenlaw, Berwickshire, Professor Gibson was born at that place 19th April, 1858. He was educated first at the Free Church School of his native town, and afterwards at Glasgow University. Here though his course was interrupted for two sessions by bad health, he was a prizeman in all his classes, except that of Moral Philosophy, graduated M.A. in 1881, and gained the Euing Fellowship in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in 1882. In 1883 he was appointed Assistant to the Professor of Mathematics in Glasgow University, and while holding this appointment, two years later, went to Berlin and attended mathematical lectures in the University there. When the Ordinance of 1891 came into force he became Lecturer on Mathematics in his alma mater, and in November, 1895, he was elected Professor of Mathematics in the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College, the post which he still holds.
    Apart from the regular work of his Chair, Professor Gibson has served as Examiner for the Preliminary Examinations and for degrees in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in Glasgow University. His publications include "An Elementary Treatise on the Calculus" (Macmillan), "An Elementary Treatise on Graphs," and "A First Course in Calculus, based on Graphic Methods," besides numerous articles on mathematical subjects in various scientific journals. Both in Germany and in this country he is recognised as an authority on the history of mathematical science. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, an Honorary Member of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society, of which he has been president, a member of the German Mathematical Association, a member of the American Mathematical Society, etc.
Professor Gibson married in 1880 Nellie, daughter of the late James D. Hunter, and has three surviving children.
The honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by Edinburgh University in 1905.

Back to Index of Glasgow Men (1909)