Vern L Bullough

Vern L. Bullough (1928-2006) was a pioneering sexologist, historian, and civil rights activist who became one of the world's most prominent scholars of sexual history. He earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago in 1954 and spent much of his career at California State University, Northridge, where he founded the Center for Sex Research and established an extensive collection on sex and gender. His prolific writings on homosexuality, prostitution, transgender issues, and women's studies helped establish gay and lesbian history as a legitimate field of academic study, while his activism with the ACLU made Southern California's chapter the first in the country to defend LGBTQ+ rights.