Gibney, Frank Bray

▪ 2007

      American author and journalist (b. Sept. 21, 1924, Scranton, Pa.—d. April 9, 2006, Santa Barbara, Calif.), as a naval intelligence officer during World War II, learned Japanese and became expert in East Asian politics and cultures. As a foreign correspondent and editor at various times for Time, Life, and Newsweek magazines, he was one of the first authors to present an objective and sympathetic picture of the Japanese to postwar Americans. He was the author of a number of seminal books on Japan and East Asia, including The Pacific Century: America and Asia in a Changing World (1992), which was made into an Emmy Award-winning television series. In 1966 Gibney joined Encyclopædia Britannica, where he led the company's East Asian operations and later served as vice-chairman of the editorial board. Among his accomplishments was the launching, with laudable effort and circumspection, of Britannica's first encyclopaedia for mainland China. He founded the Pacific Basin Institute in California in 1979 and continued to promote research and understanding among the peoples of the Pacific Rim.

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