Papers relating to Geoffrey McKay Gibbon, Surgeon aboard RRS 'Discovery II'

The collection is composed of: a letter from Mrs. M. D. Gibbon from their residence in Welwyn Garden City to the Registrar of the General Medical Council (Scottish Branch) indicating that her husband is absent and aboard the R.R.S. 'Discovery II'; and, the returnable component of the form sent by the Registrar of the General Medical Council (Scottish Branch), 12 Queen Street, Edinburgh, to Geoffrey McKay Gibbon presumably c/o Foreign Fleet Division, G.P.O. The form had been returned and signed by Gibbon and had been posted from South Africa in March 1932. The form bears a 2d. stamp of South Africa, with Pretoria government buildings as motif.

Geoffrey McKay Gibbon was born in Scarborough on 16 July 1896. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University and obtained the degrees of M.B., Ch.B. in 1920. He was registered in Scotland on 8 July 1920. In the 1920s he was living in Elgin and Forres in Scotland, but in the early 1930s he was in Welwyn Garden City, in Hertfordshire, England. It was at this point in his career that when requested by the Registrar of the General Medical Council (Scottish Branch) for notification of any changes to his qualifications, Gibbon's wife informed the Registrar that in September 1931 her husband 'was appointed Surgeon to the R.R.S. 'Discovery II' ' and that he would be absent from the UK for 2-years.

The Royal Research Ship 'Discovery II', which had been built in 1929, had sailed from London with Gibbon on board on 3 October 1931 on its second Antarctic commission. The purpose of the expedition was research into the economic resources of the Falkland Islands and their Dependencies in the southern ocean, and more particularly into the most important of these resources at the time: the whale populations and the whaling industry of the waters of the latter, and beyond. The ship had been under the command of Lieut. A. L. Nelson R.N.R. and Comdr. W. M. Carey R.N. (retired), and surveyed from the Magellan Strait to South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and then in the oceans around South Africa, South America, and New Zealand.

By 1934 Gibbon was working for the Cyprus Medical Service, and in the 1940s he was with the Colonial Medical Service in Uganda. In 1954, the Medical register indicated that he was residing in the Port Elizabeth area of South Africa.

Latterly, in the early-1960s (1962), Gibbon lived in Lympstone, Devon. His name ceased to appear in the Medical register after 1983.

Open to bona fide researchers, but please contact repository for details in advance of visit.

Found in 1931 volume of Medical register, Special Collections, Edinburgh University Library. Accession no: E2009.27

Compiled by Graeme D. Eddie, Edinburgh University Library, Special Collections