by Provost Peggy Agouris | January 25, 2021
Provost Peggy Agouris sent the following message to the campys community on Jan. 14, 2021. - Ed.
Dear Colleagues,
I write to share the news that Scott Donaldson, Louise G.T. Cooley Professor of English, Emeritus, died of lung cancer on December 1, 2020 at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona. Prof. Donaldson was a renowned literary biographer and, with his wife Vivian, a very generous financial supporter of William & Mary’s English department, endowing the English department’s Donaldson Writer in Residence fund.
Scott Donaldson was born in Minneapolis on November 11, 1928, the third and last child of Frank Arthur and Ruth Chase Donaldson, and maintained residence in that city until his late-30s. He attended Blake School, class of 1946, and Yale University 50. He earned his M.A. in English from the University of Minnesota in 1953, and served in the Army Security Agency during