Culture

Renowned Sex Researcher Virginia Johnson Dies at 88

She and her husband changed the way sex was studied

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Virginia Johnson, part of the husband-wife research team that transformed the study of sex in the 1960s and wrote two best-selling books on sexuality, has died in St. Louis. She was 88.

The pioneering sex researcher died Wednesday at an assisted living facility after suffering complications from various illnesses, said her son, Scott Johnson.

Johnson, who grew up in rural Missouri near the small town of Golden City, was a twice-divorced mother in her 30s when she went job-hunting at Washington University in St. Louis in the late 1950s. She was trying to support her young family while she pursued a college degree.