Victor Denenberg, emeritus professor of psychology, dies

Victor Denenberg, an emeritus professor of psychology, died July 19 at 83. He lived in Issaquah, Wash.

After graduating from high school, Denenberg served in the U.S. Army in the 95th Infantry. He was wounded in action during World War II, after which he attended college on the GI Bill. He graduated from Bucknell University in 1949, and earned his master’s, and a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Purdue University.

In 1969, as a tenured professor at Purdue, he was recruited to a newly created program in biobehavioral sciences at UConn, where he served as professor and acting head/coordinator, from 1984 to 2000.

Benson Ginsburg, professor emeritus of psychology, says Denenberg was a pioneer in his field.

“Vic’s teaching and research attracted many able graduate and postdoctoral students to the biobehavioral sciences, and later, the psychology department,” Ginsburg says. “He considered his students to be part of his extended family, and maintained close personal and professional contact with them for the remainder of his career.”

Stephen Maxson, professor of psychology, says Denenberg had a “boyish enthusiasm for living and enjoying all of life. Professionally, he was a very exceptional and highly productive experimental psychologist.”

Maxson recalls a conversation he had with Denenberg about differences between humans and animals: “I said that humans had language and animals did not. Vic responded that he thought there might be a quantitative but not qualitative difference in this between ourselves and some animals. This conversation may have been part of his incentive to develop an animal model for some aspects of human dyslexia, which is a dysfunction in human language.”