John Money - Biography

Biography

Born in Morrinsville, New Zealand to a Plymouth Brethren family, Money initially studied psychology at Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with a double master's degree in Psychology and Education at the end of 1944. Money was a junior member of the psychology faculty at the University of Otago in Dunedin, but in 1947, at the age of 26, he emigrated to the United States to study at the Psychiatric Institute of the University of Pittsburgh. He left Pittsburgh and earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1952. He was married briefly in the 1950s and had no children.

Money proposed and developed several theories and related terminology during his career, including gender identity, gender role, gender-identity/role, and lovemap. Money was a professor of pediatrics and medical psychology at Johns Hopkins University from 1951 until his death. While there, Money was involved with the Sexual Behaviors Unit, which ran studies on sex reassignment surgery. He received the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal in 2002 from the "German Society for Social-Scientific Sexuality Research".

Money was an early supporter of New Zealand's arts, both literary and visual. He was a noted friend and supporter of author Janet Frame. In 2002, as his Parkinson's disease worsened, Money donated a substantial portion of his art collection to the Eastern Southland Art Gallery in Gore, New Zealand. In 2003 the New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark, opened the John Money wing at the Eastern Southland Gallery.

Money died July 7, 2006, in Towson, Maryland, of complications from Parkinson's disease.