Evelyn Hooker

American psychologist (1907–1996)

Evelyn Hooker (née Gentry, September 2, 1907 – November 18, 1996) was an American psychologist known for her 1956 paper "The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual" in which she administered several psychological tests to groups of self-identified male homosexuals and heterosexuals and asked experts to identify the homosexuals and rate their mental health. The experiment, which other researchers subsequently repeated, found that homosexuality was not a mental disorder, as there was no detectable difference between homosexual and heterosexual men in terms of mental adjustment. Hooker argued that a false correlation between homosexuality and mental illness had formed the basis of classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder.

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