The Masters and Johnson research team, composed
of William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson,
pioneered research into the nature of human sexual response and
the diagnosis and treatment of sexual disorders and dysfunctions from 1957
until the 1990s.
The work of Masters and Johnson began in the Department of Obstetrics and
Gynecology at Washington University in St.
Louis and was continued at the independent not-for-profit
research institution they founded in St. Louis in 1964,
originally called the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation and renamed
the Masters and Johnson Institute in
1978. In the initial phase of Masters and Johnson's studies, from 1957 until
1965, they recorded some of the first laboratory data on the anatomy and
physiology of human sexual response based on direct observation of 382 women
and 312 men in what they conservatively estimated to be "10,000 complete
cycles of sexual response". Their findings, particularly on the nature of
female sexual arousal (for
example, describing the mechanisms of vaginal lubrication and
debunking the earlier widely held notion that vaginal lubrication originated
from the cervix) and orgasm (showing that the physiology
of orgasmic response was identical whether stimulation was clitoral or vaginal,
and, separately, proving that some women were capable of being multiorgasmic),
dispelled many long-standing misconceptions. They jointly wrote two classic
texts in the field, Human Sexual Response and Human
Sexual Inadequacy, published in 1966 and 1970, respectively. Both of these
books were best-sellers and were translated into more than thirty languages.
The team has been inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. Additionally,
they are the focus of a television series called Masters of Sex[5] for Showtime based on
the 2009 biography by
author Thomas Maier.