Gilbert Cant

Who was Gilbert Cant?

Gilbert Cant was a London-born American journalist.

Cant arrived in the U.S. in 1934 and began working for the New York Post in 1937. He was a war correspondent in the Pacific during World War II and wrote three books on the subject, The War at Sea, America's Navy in World War II, and The Great Pacific Victory. He joined Time in 1943 and was their medical editor from 1949 to 1969.

Cant was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Widowers. Cant himself was the model for the Thomas Trumbull character. After Cant died, Asimov dedicated the collection Banquets of the Black Widowers to his memory and to that of Frederic Dannay.