Virginia E. Johnson, in full Virginia Eshelman Johnson, neé Mary Virginia Eshelman (born February 11, 1925, Springfield, Missouri, U.S.—died July 24, 2013, St. Louis) American sex researcher and therapist who, with American gynecologist William H. Masters, conducted pioneering research on human sexuality. Together the researchers established the Masters & Johnson Institute (originally the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation), a world-renowned clinic in St. Louis that from 1964 until its closure in 1994 offered therapy for couples who experienced sexual dysfunction. (See also Masters and Johnson.)
Johnson was a precocious student and a talented pianist and singer. She attended Drury College (later Drury University) in Springfield, Missouri, and, for a period of time, she performed country music on a Springfield radio station under the alias Virginia Gibson. She took a job as a secretary and later moved to St. Louis, where she held jobs in newspaper reporting and, briefly, marketing. She never completed a college degree.
In 1956 Johnson, who was by then divorced three times and had two children, began to pursue opportunities to study at Washington University in St. Louis. She applied for and was given a position as a research assistant in Masters’s laboratory, supplying her with a steady income. Initially she carried out secretarial work. However, Masters instructed her in anatomy, physiology, and laboratory research, and she began helping him with his sex research. She filled a crucial role in the recruitment of study participants. With her pragmatic attitude and sociable nature, she was able to persuade hundreds of men and women to participate, even though the research was widely considered untoward. She gathered information on participants’ personal sex histories, and she observed and collected data as participants became sexually aroused, by themselves or with partners. She also became Masters’s sexual partner, at his urging.
Johnson came to be treated as an equal by Masters, and in 1964 she worked with him to establish the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation. She served initially as a research associate but later was a codirector of the institute. In 1966 the couple published their best-selling work Human Sexual Response, in which Johnson helped elucidate the female sexual experience and debunk myths about female sexual satisfaction. She also played a major role in the development of sex therapy at the couple’s institute. Her personable manner contrasted with Masters’s stark demeanor and helped make them media celebrities, with appearances on television and interviews in magazines, including features in Redbook, Playboy, and Time.
Johnson married Masters in 1971. Together they cowrote multiple books, including the later, controversial works Homosexuality in Perspective (1979) and Crisis: Heterosexual Behavior in the Age of AIDS (1988, with Robert Kolodny). The couple divorced in 1993, and the institute closed in 1994. Several years later Johnson founded the Virginia Johnson Masters Learning Center in Creve Coeur, Missouri. The facility provided educational and instructional materials to individuals who suffered from sexual dysfunction.