Thomas R. P. Gibb Jr. ’36 died on December 23, 2009, in Dover, Massachusetts.

He was born on February 10, 1916, in Belmont, Mass., and prepared for college at Belmont High School. He was a member of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity and graduated magna cum laude with high honors in chemistry, a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He earned a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1940, then served there as a teaching fellow, instructor, and assistant professor of chemistry. He spent five years as a research director at Metal Hydrides Inc. before being appointed to the newly created position of director of sponsored research at Tufts college (now Tufts University) in 1946. He returned to teaching when he was appointed associate professor of chemistry in 1951 and was named full professor in 1959. He worked part-time on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He authored the book Optical Methods of Chemical Analysis in 1942, as well as more than 40 scientific papers and sections in two encyclopedias. He spent 1964 as an honorary research associate at University College, London, learning quantum mechanics, and spent 1970 at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute learning chemical oceanography, then bought a sloop with room for a small lab. He retired from Tufts in 1979. He is survived by his wife Reen D. Meergans Gibb; and three grandchildren.