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.

(Bowker Author Biography)