and professor of entomology
and zoology
, who in 1947 founded the Institute for Sex
Research at Indiana University, now known as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, as well as producing the Kinsey Reports
and the Kinsey scale
. Kinsey's research on human sexuality
, foundational to the modern field of sexology
, provoked controversy in the 1940s and 1950s. His work has profoundly influenced social and cultural values in the United States and many other countries.
Alfred Kinsey was born on June 23, 1894, in Hoboken, New Jersey
, to Alfred Seguine Kinsey and Sarah Ann Charles.
The very general occurrence of the homosexual in ancient Greece, and its wide occurrence today in some cultures in which such activity is not taboo suggests that the capacity of an individual to respond erotically to any sort of stimulus, whether it is provided by another person of the same or opposite sex, is basic in the species.
It cannot be too frequently emphasized that the behavior of any animal must depend upon on the nature of the stimulus which it meets, its anatomic and physiologic capacities, and its background of previous experience. Unless it has been conditioned by previous experience, an animal should respond identically to identical stimuli, whether they emanate from some part of its own body, from another individual of the same sex, or from an individual of the opposite sex.