Prof. Alan Gibbons was Emeritus Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Informatics at King's College London, a post he held from his retirement in 2007 until his death in March 2024[reference:2]. He began his academic life in physics, completing an undergraduate degree at the University of Nottingham in 1964 before a PhD in Theoretical Physics at the University of Warwick.
He remained at Warwick for 25 years and was one of the founding academics of its Department of Computer Science, helping craft the first computer science curriculum in the 1970s. His interests moved from the software techniques behind programming-language design toward combinatorics and algorithmics, and he became an expert in both[reference:5]. Two of his books became standard references: *Algorithmic Graph Theory* and *Efficient Parallel Algorithms*, the latter written with Prof. Wojciech Rytter of the University of Warsaw.
His research covered graph colouring, data compression, randomised and probabilistic algorithms, and nature-inspired models of computation, including supervising early doctoral work on DNA computation. He published widely in conferences and leading journals throughout his career, and served as second Chairman of the British Colloquium for Theoretical Computer Science from 1992 to 1998.
Prof. Gibbons spent five years as Professor of Computer Science and Head of Department at the University of Liverpool before moving to King's College London in 2001, where he also served as Head of Department. He became Professor Emeritus at King's and an Honorary Professor at Warwick, and remained research active for several years after retirement.
Prof. Gibbons' contributions to theoretical computer science were significant and wide-ranging, reflecting both a boundless curiosity and a genuine sense of fun. As one of the founding academics of Warwick's computer science department, he helped build a curriculum and a research culture that shaped generations of students, and his two textbooks on algorithmic graph theory and parallel algorithms remained standard references for decades.
We are grateful for the rigour he brought to the formal side of computing — the insistence that an algorithm must be proved, not merely demonstrated. That standard continues to inform the care with which APC reviews manuscripts in computer science and the mathematical sciences.
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