Geotechnical engineers across the world recognise a Gibson soil as one in which the stiffness increases linearly with depth. Before Bob Gibson’s pioneering work was published in the early 1970s the analytical solutions used for foundation design assumed that the stiffness was constant with depth, an assumption that was not generally realistic. A decade earlier he had begun his other big contribution to civil engineering design by presenting an analytical solution to describe the consolidation behaviour of very soft soils, without the previous constraint that overall strains were small. As construction took place on more difficult ground, and as land reclamation increased, this work became increasingly important.

Robert Edward Gibson was born in 1928 in Felpham, Sussex. After Emanuel School and a year at Battersea Polytechnic, he transferred to Imperial College where he obtained his BSc in engineering at 19. After brief spells at RAE Farnborough and the Ministry of Works , in the Chief Scientific Advisor’s Division, he returned to Imperial College to work for a PhD. He was supervised by Prof Alec Skempton, who recognised and encouraged his mathematical ability and analytical strengths. Having taken his doctorate, he spent three years at Imperial College before moving to the Building Research Station in 1953, where he worked with John McNamee, a mathematician. This association developed Gibson’s mathematical genius, and he tackled many problems of seepage, consolidation and deformation that had previously seemed intractable. By 1956 he was back at Imperial, first as a lecturer, then as a Reader, and moved in 1965 to Kings College London, where he took up a chair in engineering science in 1967, a year after he had received a DSc.

Geotechnics was a young and flourishing discipline, and Gibson was involved in much of the pioneering work. His contributions were in the application of elastic and plastic models to describe the behaviour of soils, and in the solution of the complex equations involved, but his success was due to his engineering sense and a strong feeling for the way in which soil would behave, as well as in his mathematics.

Computer simulation was in its infancy, and his ability to define real soil behaviour so that it could be tackled mathematically allowed improved predictions to be made, both for the design of projects such as earth dams, and in the interpretation of new instruments such as the pressuremeter.

This combination of academic and engineering insight was recognised in the award of an industrial fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford, in 1983-85. He acted as a consultant in parallel with his academic career, and, later on, became a principal in Golder Associates, involved in a variety of projects in North America and the UK. One of his most notable contributions was to the construction of offshore artificial sand islands — huge, impermeable bags filled with sand and water, with some of the water pumped out to give strength to the sand.

Gibson was highly esteemed in the geotechnical community, and was twice editor of Geotechnique, the leading technical journal. He was the Rankine lecturer in 1974, a most prestigious recognition of excellence. He won various prizes for his papers and his work, including awards by the British Geotechnical Society and the John Booker Medal, and he was elected a Fellow of the Fellowship (now Royal Academy) of Engineering in 1984.

Gibson was inspirational to his students, remaining in touch with many of them until well after his retirement. He had a strong sense of enthusiasm for his work and the geotechnical community, a great love for life, music and the company of friends and he set great store by helping others. He was a very kind man.

He is survived by daughter and son.

Professor Robert Gibson, geotechnical engineer, was born on May 12, 1928. He died on December 23, 2008, aged 80