The College of Arts and Sciences is proud to recognize Dr. Victor Laurie for his contributions to the University of South Carolina and especially our College. Born in Columbia on June 1, 1935, Victor was fascinated by nature as a child. In fact, by age six he had already decided he wanted to become a scientist. By the age of nine, Victor had a reputation for blowing things up. Because this was right around the time of the atomic bomb, Victor's granddad came to him one day and told him he would have to stop because he was beginning to scare the neighbors! After his graduation from Dreher High School, Victor continued his dream of becoming a scientist, receiving his Bachelor of Science degrees in both Chemistry and Math from the University of South Carolina in 1954. While at Carolina he was a member of Phi Kappa Sigma, Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society, Omicron Delta Kappa, Blue Key, the Clariosophic Society, the American Chemical Society, and Alpha Phi Omega. After graduating first in his class at Carolina, Victor left the state of South Carolina and went on to receive his A.M. and Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Harvard University.

Victor has held several positions on both the West and East coasts. He was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., and a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California in Berkeley, California. Following this, Victor was Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and Associate and Full Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. In addition to these positions, he is also an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, and Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Although Victor has moved on from the state of South Carolina, he has kept the University of South Carolina close to his heart. He has been a wonderful supporter of the University and especially the College of Arts and Sciences. Along with his wife, Donna, he made generous gifts to both the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Chemistry to endow the Victor W. Laurie Scholarship in Mathematics and the Victor W. Laurie Scholarships in Chemistry and Biochemistry. The Victor W. Laurie Scholarship in Mathematics provides support for a scholarship for an undergraduate student who is participating in a summer research project in the field of mathematics, while the Victor W. Laurie Scholarships in Chemistry and Biochemistry are for a rising junior and a rising senior chemistry major. In addition to the scholarships he has established, Victor's generous donations to the Department of Chemistry have allowed the department to enhance its divisional seminars, start a recruiting seminar series to bring in faculty from smaller colleges in the southeast, and support graduate student travel awards that allow students to give presentations at national and international meetings. Because of his generosity to the Department of Chemistry, Room 218 in the Graduate Science Research Center has been named "The Victor Laurie Spectroscopy Instrument Room" in his honor.

Now retired, Victor writes articles on computer education and lectures frequently on computer topics to groups in the Princeton area. He is especially interested in encouraging senior citizens to use computers. Because of this, Victor is involved with the national organization called SeniorNet and is a volunteer teacher of computer courses at a senior center in Ewing, New Jersey. In addition, he maintains several websites devoted to computer education. Between them, Victor and his wife, Donna, have four children and six grandchildren.

From the past come fond memories of my four years in the University. In those days Carolina was only just starting to build itself into the place it has become but it was an exciting place for me. I also have to say that I have happy memories in general of growing up in South Carolina. I don't know exactly how the process works but there is some essence of the spirit of the state and its long history that sort of soaks into you. I have not lived in South Carolina for over fifty years now but that spirit has stayed with me. Of course, there were some things back then that were not admirable, segregation in particular. But there has been a mighty evolution in attitudes and I am happy to see diversity everywhere on the campus and in the state.

However, it isn't just some fond recollections from youth or gratitude for the education that I was given years ago that motivates me to want to contribute to Carolina. I also want to be part of the future. Our time on earth is very fleeting and our impact on human progress is transitory at best. As a scientist I have had the opportunity to make small contributions to basic knowledge. These contributions are momentary, however. They may serve as temporary building blocks for some further knowledge but the details are all too soon obsolete and quickly forgotten. Contrast this ephemeral nature with a university scholarship. A university like Carolina is among the most permanent of human institutions. A scholarship will be providing help to educate someone as far into the future as we humans can see. Funding a scholarship now allows me to know that for years to come I will be contributing in a tiny way to human knowledge and to the society that nurtured me.

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