John H Gibbons

John Howard Gibbons was born in Harrisonburg, Va., on Jan. 15, 1929. His father was a business manager for Madison College, the forerunner of James Madison University, and his older brother, William Conrad Gibbons, was a historian of the Vietnam War. He died in July. Dr. Gibbons graduated from Randolph-Macon College in 1949 and received a doctorate in physics from Duke University in 1954. From 1954 to 1969 he worked at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, studying how stars produce the heavy elements found throughout the universe. He turned to environmental issues in 1969, studying energy at Oak Ridge. In 1973, as the nation suffered its first big energy crisis, he was appointed the first director of the Federal Office of Energy Conservation. After a stint at the University of Tennessee, he returned to Washington to direct the Office of Technology Assessment. Though billed as bipartisan and lauded for its detailed studies, including cost-benefit analyses, it was abolished in 1995 by the new Republican majority in Congress. After leaving the government, he worked with Population Action International, the Virginia Commission on Climate Change and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Besides his daughter Virginia Gibbons , Dr. Gibbons is survived by his wife of 60 years, Mary Hobart Gibbons; another daughter, Mary Meyer; and eight grandchildren. His daughter Diana C. Gibbons died last year.