William H. Masters

William H. Masters (born December 27, 1915, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.—died February 16, 2001, Tucson, Arizona) was an American gynecologist who was a pioneer in the field of human sexuality research and sex therapy. With partner Virginia E. Johnson, Masters conducted groundbreaking research on sex physiology and in 1964 established the Masters & Johnson Institute (originally the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation), a clinic for couples who suffered from sexual dysfunction. (See also Masters and Johnson.)

Masters was born into an affluent Cleveland family. He attended the Lawrenceville School, an elite college preparatory academy in New Jersey. In 1938, after completing a degree at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, Masters studied at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. There he was mentored by American anatomist and embryologist George Washington Corner and became interested in human reproduction. Masters served briefly in the U.S. Navy in 1942. The following year he finished a degree in medicine and took an internship in obstetrics and gynecology at the St. Louis Maternity Hospital and at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, where he also later served his residencies. He also studied pathology at the Washington University School of Medicine and internal medicine at Barnes Hospital. In 1947 he accepted a faculty position at Washington University.

Masters’s early research centred on sexual dysfunction, primarily hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women, gynecologic surgery, and infertility. He began to investigate human sexuality and sex physiology in 1954, when his research plan was approved by the Washington University chancellor and board of trustees. His first research subjects were prostitutes, whom he interviewed and observed at work. Although the initial study population was too skewed to provide Masters with data that could be published, the research helped lay the foundation for the methodologies that he would later employ. In 1956–57 he hired Johnson, who initially assisted with secretarial duties. She later helped him recruit a more-balanced study population, with male and female volunteers, including university students and employees. Though she had no medical background, Masters trained her in laboratory research and basic anatomy and physiology and made her an equal partner in the work. The two were married in 1971.

Masters and Johnson interviewed volunteers about their sexual histories and observed them performing a vast range of sexual acts, alone or with partners. The researchers used tools such as electrocardiography and electroencephalography to record physiological changes associated with sexual arousal. They published their findings in Human Sexual Response (1966). Although the book was written in a clinical manner and was intended mainly for medical professionals, it became a best seller. With the information they garnered from their research, Masters and Johnson devised new methods of treating sexual dysfunction. Their therapeutic approaches were unveiled in Human Sexual Inadequacy (1970).

As they continued their work, Masters and Johnson published other books, including the well-received The Pleasure Bond (1974; with Robert J. Levin). In Homosexuality in Perspective (1979), they claimed, to much controversy, that homosexuals could be converted to heterosexuality. Crisis: Heterosexual Behavior in the Age of AIDS (1988; with Kolodny), another controversial work, was widely discredited for inaccuracies in its portrayal of HIV/AIDS. Masters and Johnson divorced in 1993, and he closed the institute in 1994, retiring that year.