William J. Whalen
American religious writer (1926–2008)
William Joseph Whalen (January 1, 1926 – March 25, 2008) was a nationally known US non-fiction writer and an expert on comparative religion.
Biography
Whalen attended the University of Notre Dame and received degrees from Marquette and Northwestern. He was an information officer with the U. S. Navy during World War II and served on Saipan and Guam.
For over forty years Whalen worked at Purdue University as a professor of communication. From 1950 he also directed the publications program at that school and in 1960 helped found Purdue University Press.
Whalen, a Roman Catholic, authored or co-authored fifteen books and wrote over two hundred articles, pamphlets and encyclopedia articles. Much of his writing compares Catholicism with other beliefs.
He died in 2008 at the age of 82 in West Lafayette, Indiana. At his death, he was director emeritus of university publications and professor emeritus of communication.
The public source identifies “William J. Whalen” as american religious writer (1926–2008). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around William, Whalen and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 18, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q8013363. VIAF identifies the subject as 162050717. The Library of Congress control number is n79073567. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1926, 2008, 1950 and 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “William J. Whalen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.