Gibrat, Robert Pierre Louis (1904–1980)

Abstract

Gibrat was born on 23 March 1904 in Lorient, France, and died on 13 May 1980 in Paris. He studied at Saint Louis de Paris, as well as in Rennes, Lorient and Brest, and in 1922 he entered the Ecole Polytechnique to become a mining engineer. He received a bachelor’s degree in science and a doctorate in law from the University of Paris. He was a technical consultant in private firms before being named director of electricity in the Ministry of Public Works, 1940–42. He became Secretary of State for Communications under the Laval government but resigned after the Allied invasion of North Africa. After the Liberation he was chief engineer of mines. He was consulting engineer for French Electric on tidal energy (1945–68) and served as Director General for atomic energy (Indatom, 1955–74), president of the scientific and technical committee of Euratom (1962), and as a consulting engineer for Central Thermique, 1942–80. He taught at Ecole des Mines from 1936 to 1968. He served as President of the French Society of Electricians, Vice President and President of the Civil Engineers of France, President of the Statistical Society of Paris (1966), President of the French Statistical Society, President and Honorary President of the Technical Committee for the Hydrotechnical Society of France, President of the French Meteorological Society (1969), Honorary President of the World Federation of Organizations of Engineers, and President of the French Section of the American Nuclear Society. Gibrat was the author of reports to the Academy of Sciences, some 100 professional articles and two books (on economics and tidal energy), and a Knight of the Legion of Honour.

This chapter was originally published in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd edition, 2008. Edited by Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume