Milton Diamond

Milton Diamond (born 6 March 1934 in New York, New York) is a professor of anatomy and reproductive biology at the University of Hawaii. He has had a very long and productive career in the study of human sexuality.

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Diamond graduated City College of New York with a B.S. in biophysics in 1955. He attended graduate school at University of Kansas from 1958-1962 and earned a Ph.D. in anatomy and psychology from that University. Afterward, he taught at the University of Louisville, School of Medicine where he simultaneously completed two years toward an M.D., passing his Basic Medicine Boards.

Diamond is also known for exposing the later life of David Reimer, a boy raised as a girl after a botched circumcision. Diamond, with the cooperation of Dr. H. Keith Sigmundson, who had been Reimer's supervising psychiatrist, tracked down the adult Reimer and found that John Money's sex reassignment of Reimer had failed. This case, which Diamond named that of "John/Joan" to protect Reimer's privacy, has become one of the most cited cases in the literature of psychiatry, psychology, women's studies, child development, and biology of gender. Diamond has also written extensively about abortion and family planning, pornography, intersexuality, transsexuality, and other sex- and reproduction-related issues for professional sex and legal journals, as well as lay periodicals. He is frequently interviewed for public media and legal matters, and ofter serves as an expert in court proceedings.

Diamond has been at University of Hawaii since 1967. He currently directs the John A. Burns School of Medicine's Pacific Center for Sex and Society, and is known for his research on the origins and development of sexual identity. He has been president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality and the International Academy of Sex Research. In 1999, he was awarded the British GIRES Research Prize, while in 2000 he was awarded the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal for sexual science. In 2005, Diamond was awarded the Norwegian Diversity Prize for his research efforts on behalf of transsexual and transgender people world-wide.

Publications

• Sexual decisions (1980) - ISBN 0-316-18388-1
• Sexwatching: Looking into the World of Sexual Behaviour (1992) - ISBN 1-85375-024-7