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Name:
Alfred C. Kinsey

Dates:
Born: June 23, 1894 in Hoboken, New Jersey
Died: 1956

Biography:
Alfred C. Kinsey was one of the most famous and influential researchers of American sexual behavior during he 20th century. After receiving a doctorate in biology from Harvard in 1920, he began his research on human sexuality entirely on his own in 1938, conducting interviews, gathering sexual histories, and making trips to various cities.

Soon he started receiving financial support from the National Research Council and the Rockefeller Foundation, and the attention cast upon his work allowed him to spend more time on his research and less on teaching. His first general publication, which appeared in 1948, was the (in)famous Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. It received widespread attention from both scholars and the general public, a situation which was repeated in 1953 when he published the companion volume Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.

In 1947 he helped found the Institute for Sex Research, a nonprofit corporation which was affiliated with Indiana University. As the staff grew, so did the library consisting of diaries, art collections, photographs, and erotica from around the world. The Institute even had to go to court to force the United States Customs to release a foreign collection of erotica which had been deemed obscene.

Kinsey's work has been criticized for methodological flaws and problems with the statistical analyses. Nevertheless, he made important contributions to the study of human sexuality by creating quantified descriptions of sexual behavior, revealing unexpected ranges of variation in sexual behavior, correcting common misconceptions about human sexuality, and demonstrating that objective research into sexuality is possible. To date, no study of comparable scope and depth has been performed - thus, despite its flaws, his work remains an invaluable resource.

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