Richard E. Orville ’58

Dick died May 20, 2024, in College Station, Texas. He was 87. 

He came to Princeton from Towson High School, where he was active in soccer, lacrosse, and student government. At Princeton, Dick played varsity lacrosse, served as a Chapel deacon, majored in physics, and was a member of Quadrangle Club. 

After graduation he served six months in the Army and then went to Johns Hopkins University and earned an M.S. in 1963 and a Ph.D. in 1966. He married Barbara Pierce while a graduate student, and then they moved to Pittsburgh. He was hired by Westinghouse Research and Development. He was an industrial scientist at Westinghouse, producing about 20 published papers and several presentations at international meetings concerning the physics of lightning. 

Dick and Barbara had two sons who went to Princeton and Johns Hopkins 

By 1983, Dick took a faculty position at SUNY at Albany as a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science. Eventually he went to the Department of Meteorology at Texas A&M University. 

He is survived by his family. The class extends its deepest sympathy to them all.