John Douglas Gibson (1925 or 1926 – 21 May 1984)[1] was an Australian amateur ornithologist who became an internationally respected expert on the Diomedeidae or albatross family.
Gibson lived in Thirroul, New South Wales all his life, and worked at the nearby Port Kembla steelworks.
This led in turn to the formation of the New South Wales Albatross Study Group.
With others in the group he devised the Gibson Plumage Index, which is named after him, as an aid to categorising and identifying the various great albatrosses.
He is also commemorated in the name of Gibson's albatross, a subspecies of the wandering albatross Diomedea exulans, though sometimes treated as a full species, Diomedea gibsoni.