EVELYN HOOKER

Evelyn Hooker (1907-96) spent most of her career as a research associate in experimental and physiological psychology at UCLA.   At UCLA she met many gay men, one of whom, a former student, urged her to study a nonclinical population of homosexuals. After receiving a grant from the National Institute for Mental Health, Hooker administered three personality tests to thirty pairs of men--one homosexual, one not--matched by IQ level, age, and other factors and turned the results of the tests over to a panel of three prominent experts, who proved unable to identify correctly the gay male in each pair and concluded that the gay males were no worse, and sometimes better adjusted than the rest. The results of this and subsequent studies, which Hooker began publishing in 1956, played an important role in the removal of homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders in 1973.