Vincent Joseph Scully Jr. was born in New Haven, Connecticut on August 21, 1920. He received a bachelor's degree in English from Yale University. During World War II, he served in the Marine Corps. He received a Ph.D. in art history from Yale University in 1949. His thesis, The Shingle Style: Architectural Theory and Design from Richardson to the Origins of Wright, was published as a book in 1955. He taught at Yale from 1947 until 2009.
He wrote several books during his lifetime including American Architecture and Urbanism; The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods: Greek Sacred Architecture; Pueblo: Mountain, Village, Dance; Architecture: The Natural and the Manmade; and Yale in New Haven: Architecture and Urbanism. He received the National Medal of Arts in 2004. He died from complications of Parkinson's disease on November 30, 2017 at the age of 97.
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