Lawrence Seibles

Lawrence Seibles, 70, a retired member of the technical staff at AT&T/Lucent Technologies’ Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., died at home in Piscataway, N.J., on Nov. 1, 2011, after a series of strokes.

Seibles attended North Carolina A&T State University, graduating magna cum laude with a B.S. in chemistry in 1963. He received an M.S. in physical chemistry from Kansas State University in 1965. Seibles then worked with organosilicones as a research chemist at Dow Corning in Midland, Mich., before earning a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Cincinnati in 1975.

In 1977, Seibles joined AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he elucidated mechanisms for formation of organopolymers and worked on development and applications of vibrational spectroscopy.

After retiring in 2001, he served as an associate professor of chemistry at Morgan State University for three years. Seibles also mentored many Project SEED students for ACS, which he joined in 1979.

Seibles authored more than 100 technical publications, including seven patents. His patents include a method for growing continuous diamond film free of nondiamond allotropes at temperatures as low as 680 °C, a field emission device that uses enhanced diamond field emitters, and a process to recover germanium from hydrated germanate-containing solids.

Seibles was an avid golfer who also enjoyed landscaping and playing the guitar.

He is survived by his wife of 38 years, Josette, and their four children, Ayana, Shania, Damalyan, and Karanjay.