Alumni Profile
Doon Gibbs Director of Brookhaven National Laboratory The College of Science alumni profile features Doon Gibbs, BS’77, in Physics & Mathematics.
A lumni Doon Gibbs is currently the Director of Brookhaven
Upon graduation, Doon moved to Portland to attend Reed College,
National Laboratory in Upton, New York. Brookhaven is a multi-program
a private liberal arts school. After two years, he returned to Utah and
U.S. Department of Energy laboratory with nearly 3,000 employees,
enrolled at the U. He worked on campus as a writer and reporter with
more than 4,000 facility users each year, and an annual budget of
The Daily Utah Chronicle, the University’s student newspaper.
about $600 million.
Brookhaven Lab’s largest facilities include the National Synchrotron
Gibbs. “But, there was one physics course that sounded intriguing.
Light Source II, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, and the Center for
It was Gale Dick’s entry-level class, ‘Physics for Poets.’ I signed up for
Functional Nanomaterials – some of the finest research instruments
summer semester 1974. Despite my best efforts to not do exactly
in the world.
what my dad did, I found that physics was totally compelling.”
But Doon’s story begins in Utah.
Doon was born in Illinois, where his father was a post doc, but
his major to Mathematics in 1975, added a Physics major in 1976 and
grew up in Salt Lake City near the University of Utah. His father, Peter
graduated with both degrees in 1977. He was a member of the Phi
Gibbs, was a prominent physics professor at the U, and his mother,
Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi honor societies.
Miriam, was a school teacher at Wasatch Elementary in the Avenues
district. The family home was just off First Avenue and Virginia Street,
the U, and chairman of the department from 1967-1976, Doon didn’t
only a few blocks from campus.
take a single class from his dad.
Education was a priority in the Gibbs’ home. Doon and his
younger siblings, Victoria and Nicholas, attended East High School. 12
“I tried just about everything else except physics in school,” says
Additional physics and math classes soon followed. He changed
Although his father was a well known professor of physics at
“Well, I got physics lessons from my dad every day, but it was
usually at home on the front porch or in the kitchen,” says Gibbs.
