Valerie Lindner

Valerie Margueritte Lindner, 30, of Falls passed away Saturday, December 9, 2023 at Geisinger CMC, Scranton. She lost her long battle with a tick-borne disease that she acquired at age 10.

Born on November 2nd, 1993 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, she is the daughter of Henry Lindner and Zabel Bedrossian.

From a young age, it was clear that she possessed an exceptional intellect. She was unschooled until age 14, when she started taking courses at local colleges. As a high school scholar at the University of Scranton, she won first place in the annual Integration Bee, a calculus-based math competition. She accumulated 80 credits before being accepted to Penn State University. There she received the Braddock Scholarship, the Bert Elsbach honors scholarship in physics and the Evan Pugh Scholar award. She earned degrees in physics, astronomy/astrophysics, and mathematics. At her graduation in 2016, she was chosen to be the student marshal for the physics department- a testament to her exceptional scholarship.

After completing her undergraduate studies, Valerie was accepted to Penn State University's physics graduate school as a Ph.D. candidate in theoretical physics and was awarded a graduate fellowship. Even though she was quite ill by that time, she completed all required courses with top marks.

Valerie was also an avid graphic artist and science fiction writer. These pursuits are what got her interested in physics in the first place. To make her stories plausible she also studied chemistry, biology, geology, engineering, and other sciences. She wrote about and drew alien species-imagining how fundamentally different they could be from us.

In addition to her parents, she is survived by her sister, Eva Lindner.

Interment will be held privately in Roberts Cemetery, Falls.

Arrangements and care are entrusted to Sheldon-Kukuchka Funeral Home, 73 W. Tioga St., Tunkhannock, PA 18657.