Hyatt M. Gibbs

Gibbs studied at the North Carolina State University with bachelor's degrees in electrical engineer and physics engineering in 1960 and in 1965 received his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, in physics. After that he was there for two years Acting Assistant Professor, before he went in 1967 to Bell Laboratories in Berkeley Heights (New Jersey), where he remained until 1980. 1975/76 he was an exchange scientist at the Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven and 1978/79 Visiting Professor at Princeton University. From 1980 he was professor of optics at the University of Arizona (Optical Science Center, College of Optical Sciences today ). In 2011 he retired. He died of cancer.

Gibbs is the author of a book on optical bistability (important for optical computers ). Most recently, he was concerned with nano-optics and his group showed first the coupling of cavity quantum electrodynamics modes ( cavity QED mode) on single quantum dots. In 1983 he received the Albert A. Michelson Medal and 1998 the Humboldt Research Award. He was a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was a Senior Member of the IEEE.

He was married twice. From his first marriage he had a son and a daughter. In his second marriage he was married to the physicist Galina Khitrova ( professor at the University of Arizona ), with whom he also worked.

An asteroid is named after him, which his son Alex R. Gibbs discovered.

Writings

• Optical Bistability: controlling light with light. Academic Press 1985.
• Publisher with Galina Khritova, Nasser Peyghambaria: Nonlinear Photonics. Springer 1990 /2012.
• Published by Paul Almond, Nasser Peyghambarian, S. Desmond Smith: Optical Bistability III. Springer, 1986.