Significant Birthday

I don't usually do things like noting birthdays of prominent people, but this one is especially important: psychologist Evelyn Hooker was born on September 2, 1907. If you don't know about Hooker, read the commentary at Box Turtle Bulletin. (Scroll down to "Today's Birthdays.") Teaser:

In 1942 while a teacher at UCLA, one of her students introduced her to other members of the gay community and challenged her to study “people like him” — homosexuals who were neither troubled by their homosexuality and who had none of the features commonly associated with mental illness. Among those she came to know was noted author Christopher Isherwood, would rented a guest house from her. “She never treated us like some strange tribe,” he recalled later, “so we told her things we never told anyone before.” Hooker quickly became convinced that most gay men were socially well-adjusted, quite unlike the homosexuals that had been written about in the scientific literature until then. By 1953 — at the peak of the McCarthy “lavender scare” period — she decided that this could be proven through psychological testing.

It goes on from there.