Our beloved friend, colleague and mentor, Dr. Victor Denenberg, passed away at 12:30PM on Saturday, July 19, 2008. He had battled cancer for some time, but died peacefully. He is survived by his wife Dr. Evelyn Thoman, three daughters, and six stepchildren, as well as numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren. According to his daughter, he noted that his greatest accomplishments were "his children and his students, because they are the future." Victor H. Denenberg was born April 3, 1925, in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Washington, D.C. He served in the Army infantry (95th Infantry) in World War II at age 18-19. He attended college on the GI Bill, and graduated from Bucknell University in 1949 with a BA in Psychology. He went on to receive a Ph.D. in 1953 in Experimental Psychology at Purdue University. He also served the US Military in Fort Knox, Kentucky, as a statistician in the Human Resources office. In 1954 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Psychology at Purdue University, where he remained through 1969. Vic had 4 daughters from his first marriage to Ruth Orner Denenberg -- Carol, Susan, and Julie, as well as Nancy who passed away several years ago. He also had a son, Jeffrey Lewis, who died in infancy.

In 1969, as a tenured Professor at Purdue University, he was recruited to a newly created program in Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of Connecticut, in Storrs, CT, where he served as Professor, and subsequently Acting Head/Coordinator (1984 - 2000). He married Evelyn Thoman in 1975, with her 6 children bringing their total brood to 10. He was enormously proud of his children and step-children, speaking of them often, and he and Evelyn decorated their home almost exclusively with professional art by their offsping. He and Evelyn also maintained a large menagerie of animals including dogs of various sizes, cats, and a goat that many of his graduate students were taught to milk. Vic enjoyed chess, reading, and skiing, and also learned to cook later in life. He relished cooking for others, and always enjoyed a good meal.
Vic retired as Professor Emeritus in 2000, and accepted a position as Visiting Professor at the University of Washington, near his new home in Issaquah, WA.

Over the course of his career, Vic published nearly 400 scholarly papers and chapters, including several statistical texts. He served on various national committees relating to early development, and spoke nationally and internationally at more conferences than can be counted. He served as reviewer for innumerable scholarly journals, and received upwards of 5 million dollars in federal and private research funding to support his ongoing research on the early development of the brain and behavior. He had many esteemed colleagues and collaborators who also considered him a friend. He is listed in Who's Who, was one of the few guests invited to Russia for the 100th Anniversary celebrating Pavlov and was noted as a national expert in statistics. Vic's contributions to the field of developmental psychobiology, including investigations of early handling, maternal behaviors, sexual differentiation and laterality set the stage for much of the research being performed today in these fields. Indeed, his work studying the role of early experience in development was landmark. He was also a founding/charter member of the Society for Neuroscience, a conference where over 30,000 scientists now meet annually. However, his most notable academic achievement was unquestionably the 70+ MS and PhD graduate students that he trained and nurtured over the course of his career -- most of whom have advanced to National and International appointments of their own.

Vic was beloved by his students for his wit and intelligence, his outstanding ability to judge character in his students, and his willingness to work with them to enhance their strengths and overcome their weaknesses -- always while providing large amounts of positive feedback and unconditional support. Vic was always delighted to debate moral and ethical dilemmas, and to discuss broad issues that his students might later refer to as "the big picture." He was a stickler for details but never got lost in them, always finding a way to place context around any finding or event. He always looked down the road to the next question, the next experiment. For many of his students, he will be remembered as one of the critical figures that changed their lives. He was truly a visionary and philosopher, and will be deeply missed.

A List of Remarkable Things About Vic (a tribute in progress from his former students)

1) Whenever you went to him with a problem, he would try to help you find a way to solve it. Sometimes he would disappear into his office, and we would hear some shouting over the telephone. After a bit he would come out and casually note "it's taken care of."

2) He always knew who was seeing who in the lab, but never commented or criticized. Occasionally, you would get a raised eyebrow -- that meant, you might have crossed a line. But he never said a word.

3) He loved good wine, good coffee, and good food.

4) He and Ev had a menagerie of wonderful animals including dogs, cats, and a goat that most of us were taught to milk.

5) Only towards the very end of his tenure at UConn did he finally break down and decide that a small wood stove was not quite enough to heat his enormous 2 story loft house. (Those of us who house-sat were ecstatic about the upgrade to an actual heating system).

6) The art collection in his home was entirely original work by his and Ev's children (many of whom are artists) -- along with a few well-placed mannequins.

7) He is one of the only people I know that kept a full-grown tree inside his house.

8) Vic and Ev had his and hers kitchens (vegetarian, and non-veg).

9) Vic and Ev had a cat box outside of the house with a "cat door". Genius!

10) Vic taught us to double check our statistics by looking at the df and the error terms before the p level.

11) In grant class, he would grade the grants using 1 color pen for "mentor" and another color for "reviewer." Only now that we are teachers do we appreciate how much work that was.

12) He rarely yelled, criticized or talked down to his students. A slight frown and "hmmmm" were enough to send us running to correct whatever we had messed up.

13) Occasionally a student would be accepted into the lab who just didn't fit, whose heart was not into the research. After some time, Vic would take the student into the Zarrow library and close the door. We would be huddled in the lab, certain the student was about to be "sacked" and would emerge a weeping mess. After about 30 min the door would open, and the student would come out with a smile and great look of relief, announcing "I have decided that graduate school really isn't for me." Vic would just nod and smile. To this day, it is a great regret that we never thought to ask him WHAT he said!

14) Even now, when our own manuscripts and proposals are reviewed, it is not uncommon to get positive comments such as "trained with one of the leaders."

15) We always, always loved to come to work -- but he never let us stay on past our time. Just as we were getting the most interesting to him, he would decide we needed to finish. Only after graduating students of our own did we realize how hard this is.