Plarr’s Lives of the Fellows

Geoffrey Reginald Gibson was born in Melbourne, Australia on 24 February 1928. He was the third and youngest son of Robert Reginald Gibson, a barrister, and his wife, Alice née Madigan, a concert pianist. After attending a Marist Brothers preparatory school in New South Wales from 1938 to 1940, he moved to St Aloysius College, a Jesuit boys school in Sydney, where he remained until 1945. Initially he studied law at Sydney University from 1946 to 1949, passing his LL.B. in 1950. He then switched to medicine and trained at the Royal North Shore Hospital (RNSH) and Sydney University, graduating MB,BS in 1956. During this time he acknowledged the influence of the surgeons K J Fagan, Victor Henry Cumberland and Eric Goulston. After house appointments at the RNSH and working as a demonstrator in anatomy at the university in 1958, he travelled to the UK. He passed the fellowship of the college in 1960 and at first he worked as an orthopaedic registrar at St Peter’s Hospital, Chertsey. The following year he joined the staff of St George’s Hospital in London as a registrar in trauma and orthopaedics. By 1962 he was back in Australia and working as a registrar in urology at the Sydney Hospital, where he was appointed a fellow in urology in 1963. He passed the fellowship of the Royal Australian College of Surgeons (RACS) in 1962. In 1967 he was elected a member of the British Association of Urological Surgery. From 1968 to 1972 he was on the New South Wales State committee of the RACS. He was a member of the executive council of the Urological Society of Australia from 1968 to 1973 and secretary of the Urological Society of Australasia from 1969 to 1972. He swam in the sea daily, played golf and tennis, and enjoyed skiing. He was also a home handyman. On 24 June 1961 he married Dr Susan Jane de Graaff-Hunter, an anaesthetist. She was a graduate of Cambridge University and St Thomas’ Hospital and the daughter of Dr James de Graaff Hunter FRS, a distinguished geodesist. They had three daughters: Diana Jane, a mathematician; Elizabeth, an architect; and Helen, a veterinary surgeon. Susan is thought to have died in 1983 and in December of that year he married Jan Purchas, a nurse. He died on 9 April 2018 aged 90.