Alexander Gibb was the great-grandson of John Gibb, an early member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a colleague of its first President, Thomas Telford.
16 Facts About Alexander Gibb
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Alexander Gibb was educated at the High School of Dundee, the Abbey School in Beckenham, Rugby School and University College London, although he left the latter after a year to become articled to the prominent civil engineers John Wolfe Barry and Henry Marc Brunel.
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That same year, Gibb married Norah Isobel Monteith, daughter of Fleet Surgeon John Lowry Monteith RN, and they had three sons, including Lieutenant Colonel Alistair Monteith Gibb.
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Alexander Gibb later worked on the construction of the Rosyth naval dockyard where he is credited with accelerating the programme so that it was brought into use during the First World War.
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In 1916, Alexander Gibb was appointed Chief Engineer of Ports Construction to the British Armies in France and Belgium, becoming Deputy-Director of Docks, British Expeditionary Force in France in 1917.
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Alexander Gibb was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath and a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1918 New Year Honours in recognition of his military service.
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Alexander Gibb joined the Ministry of Transport in 1919 as Director-General of Civil Engineering, and in the following years served on a number of committees including the Technical Committee on London Traffic, the Electrification of Railways Advisory Committee and the Light Railways Investigation Committee.
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Alexander Gibb was involved in a variety of projects worldwide, including Barking Power Station, the Galloway hydro-electric power scheme, the Kincardine Bridge, a study at the port of Rangoon and work at the Singapore Naval Base.
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Alexander Gibb wrote The Story of Telford: The Rise of Civil Engineering, a biography of the Civil Engineer Thomas Telford, to whom his great-grandfather John Gibb had been a deputy.
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Outside of engineering, Alexander Gibb served as Vice-chairman of the Managing Sub-Committee of University College London, sat on the Education Committee of the London County Council and was a member of the Council and Executive Committee of Princess Helena College.
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Alexander Gibb became less involved with his firm after 1945 and died at his home in Hartley Wintney, Hampshire, on 21 January 1958.
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Alexander Gibb's proposers were John MacKay Bernard, Sir Thomas Hudson Beare, Ernest Wedderburn, and William Archer Tait.
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Alexander Gibb was chairman of the Association for Consultancy and Engineering and the first civil engineer appointed to the Royal Fine Arts Commission.
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Alexander Gibb received an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Edinburgh and was a fellow of University College London.
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Alexander Gibb was a prominent Freemason and became Provincial Grand Master of Ross and Cromarty and Past Substitute Grand Master of Scotland.
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Alexander Gibb was inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame in 2023.