Victor J. Stenger

Victor J. Stenger
Victor J. Stenger in 2011
Born	January 29, 1935 Bayonne, New Jersey
Died	August 25, 2014(2014-08-25) (aged 79) Hawaii
Citizenship	United States of America
Nationality	American
Fields	physics, philosophy
Alma mater	UCLA
Thesis	Low Energy K+d Scattering and the I=0 KN Interaction (1963)
Doctoral advisor	Harold K. Ticho
Spouse	Phylliss Marcia Stenger (m. 1962)
Children	Noelle Green, Victor Andrew

Victor John Stenger (January 29, 1935 – August 25, 2014) was an American particle physicist, philosopher, author, and religious skeptic.

Following a career as a research scientist in the field of particle physics, Stenger was associated with New Atheism and he also authored popular science books. He published twelve books for general audiences on physics, quantum mechanics, cosmology, philosophy, religion, atheism, and pseudoscience, including the 2007 best-seller God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist. His final book was God and the Multiverse: Humanity's Expanding View of the Cosmos (September 9, 2014). He was also a regular featured science columnist for the Huffington Post.

He was an advocate for removing the influence of religion from scientific research, commercial activity, and the political decision process, and he coined the phrase "Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings".

Victor J. Stenger was born on January 29, 1935 and raised in a working-class neighborhood of Bayonne, New Jersey. His father was a Lithuanian immigrant and his mother was the daughter of Hungarian immigrants. He died in August 2014 at the age of 79.

Stenger attended public schools in Bayonne, New Jersey before going on to receive a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Newark College of Engineering (now the New Jersey Institute of Technology). He then moved to Los Angeles on a Hughes Aircraft Company fellowship, where he earned a Master of Science from UCLA in 1958 and a Ph.D in 1963, both in physics.