Kinsey, Alfred

Introduction

Alfred Charles Kinsey was born in 1894 in Hoboken, New Jersey, to Sarah Ann Charles and Alfred Seguine Kinsey. The oldest of three children in a devout Methodist home, he loved hiking, scouting, and playing the piano, but also suffered from a number of illnesses including rickets and typhoid fever. Socially avoidant but respected by classmates for his academic abilities, he was referred to as a future “second Darwin” in his high school yearbook (Jones, 2004, p. 32). Indeed, Kinsey would be posthumously regarded as “one of the most influential Americans of the twentieth century” (Bullough, 2004, p. 277) due to his pioneering sex research at Indiana University.

Career

Kinsey began his college education studying engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, where his father was a faculty member. After 2 years of mediocrity in both effort and grades – likely due to lack of interest in engineering and pressure from his authoritarian father – Kinsey transferred to...