Victor W. Laurie

Victor W. Laurie died on 13 September 2023 at age 88.

He was born in Columbia, South Carolina, on 1 June 1935, the son of Victor H. Laurie and Kathleen Rice Laurie.

In 1950, at age 15, Laurie entered the University of South Carolina in Columbia. In 1953 he graduated first in his class with an AB in mathematics. His first love was chemistry, and he stayed another year at the university to obtain a BS in chemistry. During his time at the University of South Carolina, he received a number of awards and honors, including election to Phi Beta Kappa and selection for the Outstanding Senior Award. He was also active in several service organizations and served as president of the social fraternity Phi Kappa Sigma.

After graduation, he was an NSF Fellow and entered graduate school in the chemistry department at Harvard University, where he obtained a PhD in physical chemistry. His doctoral research was carried out in the molecular spectroscopy group of E. Bright Wilson, who had been one of Linus Pauling’s early students.

After finishing his PhD thesis, he received a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship and spent two years in the molecular spectroscopy laboratory at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, DC. He then spent a year as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in the chemistry department at the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1960 Laurie joined the faculty of the chemistry department at Stanford University as an assistant professor. In 1966 he went to the chemistry department of Princeton University as an associate professor; he was promoted to full professor in 1971.

In his research, Laurie made numerous contributions using spectroscopy to determine molecular structure. His research group was also the first to study isotope effects on molecular dipole moments with high-precision Stark effect measurements, and he pioneered the use of microwave spectroscopy to make molecular polarizability measurements.

Laurie was a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He was also an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow in 1963–67 and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in 1971. He served terms as an editor for the Annual Review of Physical Chemistry and for the Journal of Chemical Physics.

In his later years, Laurie was very active in computer education. He wrote many articles aimed at helping the average person to be a safer and more knowledgeable user of personal computers. He also created and ran several well-known websites containing his articles. For five years he wrote a column with computer tips at the popular website Gizmo’s Freeware. He was particularly interested in helping senior citizens make better use of computers. His many lectures to senior citizen groups were very popular, and for some years he was a volunteer teacher of computer courses at a local senior center. His contributions to computer education for senior citizens received citations from the national organization SeniorNet and from the local government.

Laurie was a generous contributor to numerous charities and endowed a variety of fellowships in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where he served on the Board of Visitors for several years. He was designated Alumnus of the Month in March 2006.

He is survived by his wife of many years, Donna Komar Laurie, who is a former New York Times editor. He is also survived by a son William Laurie and a daughter Kathleen Kish from a previous marriage, a stepdaughter Margaret Spicer, a stepson Charles Stempler, numerous grandchildren, step-grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and step great-grandchildren, a sister Betsy Sivec, and a nephew August Sivec.

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