High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Robert C. Giffen (1886 ? 1962) was an admiral in the United States Navy. Robert Carlisle Giffen was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on 29 June 1886. He attended the University of Notre Dame, in South Bend, Indiana, before appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy from the State of Nebraska in 1903. Midshipman Giffen graduated with the Academy's class of 1907 and was assigned to the battleship USS Virginia, in which he voyaged around the world with the "Great White Fleet" between late 1907 and early 1909.