born June 23, 1894, Hoboken, N.J., U.S.
died Aug. 25, 1956, Bloomington, Ind.
U.S. zoologist and expert on human sexual behaviour.
After earning a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1920, he taught zoology at Indiana University, where he became the founder-director, in 1942, of the university's Institute for Sex Research (renamed the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, Inc., in 1981). His inquiries into human sexuality led him to publish Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). These reports, based on 18,500 personal interviews, received extraordinary publicity for their conclusions about contemporary sexual mores and behaviour. Kinsey's methodologies and statistical samplings, however, have been highly questioned and criticized in recent years.