Ira L. Reiss has been a prominent sexuality researcher since the mid-1950s, and retired from his position as professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis in 1997. Reiss grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania

Scranton, Pennsylvania

Scranton is a city in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, United States. It is the county seat of Lackawanna County and the largest principal city in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area. Scranton had a population of 76,089 in 2010, according to the U.S...

 during the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

. In 1964, Reiss developed the most widely used scale of premarital sexual standards, the Reiss Premarital Sexual Permissiveness Scale. After his retirement he published An insider's view of sexual science since Kinsey in 2006.

The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality

Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality

The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality , formed in 1957, is a non-profit, professional membership organization that says it is "the oldest professional society dedicated to the advancement of knowledge about sexuality." It reports to have more than 1,000 members and has a quarterly...

grants The Ira and Harriet Reiss Theory Award annually to the author(s) of the best social science article, chapter, or book published in the previous year in which theoretical explanations of human sexual attitudes and behaviors are developed. This award, which is dedicated to both Ira Reiss and his wife Harriet is meant to highlight and support theoretical advances in social science theories concerning human sexuality. Reiss has also co-authored the 1997 book Solving America's Sexual Crisis with his wife