Ruth Westheimer was a sex therapist, educator, author, and broadcaster who made direct conversations about sexuality accessible to large audiences. Her radio and television work challenged silence around anatomy, pleasure, relationships, and safer sex. Her legacy shows the public value of clear information while reminding us that media advice cannot replace individual clinical assessment or consent.

Eli Coleman is a professor emeritus, sexual-health researcher, educator, and former director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Health. His work connects sexual rights, clinical care, public policy, transgender health, sexuality education, and research on complex sexual concerns.

Peter A. Levine is the developer of Somatic Experiencing, a body-oriented trauma-therapy approach. With doctorates in medical biophysics and psychology, he developed a model centred on bodily sensation, gradual attention, pendulation, titration, and completion of defensive responses. His work is influential, but its mechanisms and outcomes require careful reading of the developing evidence base.

Richard Green was a psychiatrist, sexologist, lawyer, researcher, journal founder, and advocate whose work helped change the public and professional treatment of homosexuality and transgender experience. His legacy includes influential research, the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the International Academy of Sex Research, and legal advocacy.

Julia Heiman is a clinical psychologist and sex researcher whose work has examined physiological and emotional dimensions of sexuality, treatment for sexual difficulties, relationship satisfaction, sexual violence, condom use, cancer, and sexual risk. As director of the Kinsey Institute, she expanded research and public scholarship. Her work shows why sexual response must be studied alongside context, health, safety, and meaning.

Walter Bockting is a clinical psychologist and researcher whose work examines gender identity and sexual orientation across the lifespan, transgender health, LGBTQ+ ageing, social stigma, resilience, and gender-affirming care. His research joins clinical practice with longitudinal and community health methods.

Pat Ogden is a psychologist, somatic-psychology pioneer, and founder of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute. Her work integrates body awareness, movement, posture, attachment, cognition, and trauma therapy. It offers a way to include bodily experience in psychotherapy while requiring careful attention to interpretation, consent, culture, and the developing evidence base.

Kristen Mark is a sex and relationship researcher, educator, and therapist whose interdisciplinary work examines sexual wellbeing, pleasure, desire, satisfaction, sexual function, desire discrepancy, trauma, and sexuality education. She connects population research with practical clinical and public-health translation.

Beverly Whipple is a professor emerita, sexuality educator, counselor, and researcher whose work has addressed orgasm, sexual arousal, safer sex, and sexual health. Her public writing helped make sexual information accessible, while her research also illustrates why contested anatomical claims require careful evidence and should never become a performance standard.

Amy Muise is a social psychologist and director of York University’s Sexual Health and Relationships Lab. Her research uses daily, dyadic, and longitudinal methods to study sexual desire, satisfaction, motivation, gender dynamics, and how diverse couples navigate conflict and life transitions.