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The Indiana Daily Student

Paul Gebhard, former director of the Kinsey Institute, dead at 98

Alfred Kinsey and Paul Gebhard work together in 1953. Gebhard was the last member of the original Kinsey research team and died on July 9. He was 98 years old.

Paul Gebhard, the former director of the Kinsey Institute and the last member of the original research team that worked with Alfred Kinsey, died July 9 at the age of 98.

He died near his home in Nashville, Indiana, following a brief illness, according to the Kinsey 
-Institute.

He joined Kinsey’s research team at IU in 1946 and was the co-author of Kinsey’s controversial best-seller “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female,” the follow-up to “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,” which was published in 1948, according to the Kinsey 
Institute.

Gebhard served as director for the Institute following Kinsey’s death in 1956 until 1982. During this time, the Institute continued its research on topics including pregnancy, abortion, sexual deviance, homosexuality and the social structure of sexuality.

Gebhard was a graduate of Harvard University, an anthropologist and taught in the Department of Anthropology from 1947 to 1986.

In a series of interviews filmed by the Institute in 2014, Gebhard reminisced about his years at the Kinsey Institute, including the day he met Kinsey and received a job offer.

After visiting Kinsey and meeting several other 
members of the research team, Kinsey asked Gebhard if he had a job offer. He said yes, and they were going to pay him $4,000 a year.

“He said, ‘I’ll give you $4,150,’” Gebhard said. “I felt like a little boy that fell into a candy shop.”

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