In Memoriam

On October 17, 1992, electroencephalographers lost the “Father of Clinical EEG.” Frederic Gibbs did not care about such a title, given to him by many of his colleagues; he cared only about discovering relationships between distinctive EEG patterns and their associated clinical conditions. He was born on February 9, 1903 in Baltimore, graduating from Yale University in 1925. He received his M.D. degree from the Johns Hopkins University in 1929 before joining the faculty at Harvard Medical School. He first considered neuropathology as a specialty, since his father had died of a brain tumor, but he soon became enamored with the living brain and its electrical activity. With Albert Grass of Grass Instrument Co., Gibbs helped to develop the early EEG machines and with Hallowell Davis, William Lennox, and others, fathered from infancy the development of clinical electroencephalography. His major interest was epilepsy and from his very early investigations on vascular changes during seizures, he was a pioneer in the study of cerebral blood flow in man. His wife, Erna, a close and devoted professional colleague, worked with him on this and all other projects.

In 1944, the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois wrote that the Gibbses were “outstanding workers in clinical and experimental encephalopathy and the University of Illinois is extremely fortunate in having the opportunity of securing their services.” At Illinois he set up, in 1944, his well-known clinical EEG laboratories and also the first epilepsy clinic in the United States, now possibly the largest with 1,500 patients. Neuroscientists came from all corners of the globe to work with the Gibbses, especially to learn clinical EEG. These visiting scientists included B. Fuster (Chile), A. Fois (Italy), B.K. Bagachi (India), K. Shimizu (Japan), S. Refsum (Norway), and many others. His many awards included the Mead Johnson Award (1938), Lasker Award (1951), the Distinguished Service Award from the Illinois Professional Council (1958), the Archibald L. Hoyne Award from the Chicago Pediatric Society (1979), and the Golden Chicago Brain Award (1984). In 1975, he retired and was given an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Illinois in 1977.

Dr. Gibbs was one of the founders of the American EEG Society (its second President), also founding the American Medical EEG Association and its journal, Clinical EEG, and was responsible for developing the Brain Research Foundation of Chicago. With Percival Bailey, Gibbs was involved in the earliest of the temporal lobectomies for complex partial seizures.

Frederic Gibbs was a consummate gentleman. This writer has never seen him act in any other way except as a charming, sensitive man. His strong feelings for the truth, as he saw it, without regard to the prevailing politics, explain in part why this charming gentleman mav be considered bv some as “controversial.” An example can be given regarding Wilder Penfield’s Sigma Xi lecture at Harvard proposing that vascular spasm occurs during seizures. The famous neurosurgeon, Penfield, had apparently disregarded all of the reprints that Gibbs had sent him documenting that the opposite change, namely dilatation, occurs during seizures. When asked his opinion, Gibbs clearly stated it, but with decorum. Today some might consider Gibbs to be lacking in “political correctness,” but many more would consider him a courageous man of conviction, insistent on the facts which he had. The only other explanation for his “controversial” nature was that two giants were developing EEG in North America, one in Montreal and one in Chicago, one with emphasis on bipolar, the other on monopolar recordings, one with the “International 10-20 System of electrode placement,” the other with his own system begun in the late 1930s. One had emphasized the experimental basis of EEG and the other addressed the importance of clinical EEG on man. As often occurs, other colleagues viewed the two schools in much more conflict than actually did occur. One other reason why Gibbs was often severely criticized may be that Americans often honor heroes by placing them on a pinnacle only to remove them from that lofty status and try to bring them down to everyone else’s level. Although I was never trained by this man, I consider Frederic Gibbs as the world’s earliest and most knowledgeable clinical electroencephalographer, who also was one of nature’s gentlemen.

– John R. Hughes, M.D., Ph.D.

Tribute to Frederic A. Gibbs, M.D.

It is difficult to select from the major initiatives of Fred Gibbs. They were so many and so varied. The task is made more difficult by the long and warm personal relationships between the Grass and Gibbs families. Simply know that such was true and deeply treasured. We became friends in the mid-1930s, a span of over sixty years. I will try, however, objectively to dissect several achievements (shared by his talented wife Erna) that have had major impact on today’s working technologists. The Gibbs Atlases will endure as consistent collections of incredible numbers and varieties of normal and abnormal EEG recordings, beautifully reproduced and very carefully described. There are about five volumes, starting in 1941. Secondly, he initiated the journal, Clincial Electroencephalography, in 1970, that he considered essential as a forum for description of clinical disorders that could be elucidated by electroencephalography. This journal was supplemented by the formation, in about 1965, of the American Medical Electroencephalographic Association with similar purpose. Both continue.

– Ellen R. Grass

Originally published in:

The Neurodiagnostic Journal, 33(2), 90-92, 1993
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00029238.1993.11080437