James and Jean Gibson have donated $25,000 to the West Virginia University Foundation, Inc., to establish a new fund to support the Department of Chemistry in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.

The James H. and Jean H. Gibson Department of Chemistry Unrestricted Endowed Fund in Memory of Professor John A. Gibson Jr. will provide flexible funds to meet the various needs of the department.

The Eberly College appreciates this gift from Dr. and Mrs. Gibson who understand the need for academic units to have flexible funds to meet special needs as they arise,said Mary Ellen Mazey, Eberly College dean.

Both Gibson and his wife have strong family ties to the Eberly College and the chemistry department. Gibsons father, John A. Gibson, Jr., taught chemistry at WVU from 1937 to 1967. His mother, Eleanor R. Gibson, was also a graduate of the chemistry program, and her grandfather, Powell Benton Reynolds, was the first dean of what is now the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Gibson, a native of Morgantown, graduated cum laude from WVU in 1952 with a bachelors degree in chemistry and minors in physics and mathematics. He received his Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from Cornell University in 1957. He worked for the Eastman Kodak Co., spent a postdoctoral year at Cornell, and worked with the U.S. Army Chemical Corps in Dugway, Utah, before joining the chemistry faculty of Colorado State University in 1963.

Throughout his career, Gibson was interested in interdisciplinary research and joined the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL), Werner College of Natural Resources, where he was later appointed director and eventually, senior tesearch scientist. He went on to direct the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP), and designed and established the USDA UV -B Monitoring and Research Program.

The WVU Foundation, Inc., is a private, non-profit corporation that develops, receives and administers private gifts from individuals and organizations for the benefit of WVU .