Considering the story is included in the "fix-up" novel The Voyage of the Space Beagle, which includes Black Destroyer, the story that is said to have started the golden age of science fiction, I'm pretty sure he was familiar with it.
http://hell.pl/szymon/Baen/The%20best%20of%20Jim%20Baens%20Universe/Th e%20World%20Turned%20Upside%20Down/0743498747___5.htm The creature in Discord in Scarlet is zero in powers compared to Galactus, but they both share the consept about a powerful survivor from an older universe.
A. E. Van Vogt was one of the really big ones in science fiction back in the days: http://www.scifiwright.com/2013/02/the-big-three/
Kirby poured out tons of ideas during the years, and the ideas had to come from somewhere. Often they came from his own mind, on other occations they were ideas and inspirations from external stories, probably on a subconscious level. If the origin of Galactus was invented by Kirby alone (or with Stan Lee), or if he was inspired by Van Vogt or others, is impossible to say. But it really doesn't matter. You can steal a story, but you can't steal a concept or an idea. Ideas belongs to everybody. And being inspired to write an independent story after reading others' work, is in no way plagiarism. Just imagine how many pieces of work about time travel that has been written after Wells' Time Machine (and he was not the first one either, even if it was probably the first time travel story that was explained as science and was not the result of magic or some dream). Either way, I just hope future movies will show us a lottle more of Galactus.
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