Alfred Charles Kinsey (1894 - 1956)

Biography

Alfred Kinsey was an American sexologist, biologist, and professor of entomology and zoology who founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University. He is remembered for his writings on sexual behaviours as well as for creating the Kinsey scale to measure the spectrum of human sexual orientation.

Alfred Charles Kinsey was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, June 23, 1894. He is the son of Alfred Kinsey and Sarah Charles.

He attended Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine (1914-1916), graduating magna cum laude with a B.S. in biology and psychology. He received his Sc.D. in biology from Harvard University in September 1919, and came to Indiana University as an assistant professor of zoology in August 1920.

He established a solid academic reputation for his biology tests and his research in taxonomy and evolution. By 1937, American Men of Science listed him as one of their starred scientists.

Then in 1938, Kinsey took over coordination of the new marriage course at Indiana University, and soon after began gathering case histories of sexual behavior. In 1940, President Herman B Wells gave Kinsey a choice: to continue either with the marriage course or with his sexuality research project. Kinsey and his staff collected over 18,000 interviews, and published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948 and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953.

He died in 1956 at the age of 62.

In 2019, Alfred was among the first 50 people inducted into the The National LGBTQ Wall of Honor. This memorial wall is located within the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York and dedicated to American LGBTQ "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes".^[1]

He and Patrick Swayze are 7th cousins. Puritan immigrant John Swazey was his 8th GGF.

Sources

1. ↑ National LGBTQ Wall of Honor Unveiled at Historic Stonewall Inn published by The National LGBTQ Task Force on June 20, 2019.

• "New Jersey, Births, 1670-1980," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FCTT-5LR : 9 March 2018), Alfred C. Kinsey, 23 Jun 1894; citing Hoboken, Hudson, New Jersey, United States, Division of Archives and Record Management, New Jersey Department of State, Trenton.; FHL microfilm 494,226.

• "United States Census, 1900," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M9JK-G74 : accessed 8 February 2019), Alfred C Kinsey in household of Alfred S Kinsey, Precinct 1 Hoboken city Ward 5, Hudson, New Jersey, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 45, sheet 4A, family 72, NARA microfilm publication T623 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1972.); FHL microfilm 1,240,973.

• TIME Magazine Cover: Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey - Aug. 24, 1953 - Sex - Health & Medicine: http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19530824,00.html

• "Family Tree," database, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : modified 08 February 2019, 22:37), entry for Alfred Charles Kinsey(PID https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/4:1:M5GB-DPT); contributed by various users.

See also:

• Find A Grave: Memorial #583

• FBI File On Alfred Kinsey

• Wikipedia: Alfred C. Kinsey

• Wikidata: Item Q186561, en:Wikipedia

• Time Magazine Cover Public Domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alfred_Kinsey-TIME-1953.jpg