Joseph Murphy (May 20, 1898 - December 16, 1981) was an Irish born, naturalised American author and New Thought minister, ordained in Divine Science and Religious Science.Murphy was born in Ireland, the son of a private boys' school headmaster and raised a Roman Catholic.After his first wife died in 1976, he remarried to a fellow Divine Science minister who was his longstanding secretary. He moved his ministry to Laguna Hills, California, where he died in 1981.