John H. Gagnon (November 22, 1931 – February 11, 2016) was a sociologist of human sexuality who wrote and edited 15 books and over 100 articles.
At the Kinsey Institute, Gagnon worked with his friend whom he had met in the midst of his graduate studies at the University of Chicago, William Simon - they started a brief but highly productive collaborative period.
Subsequently, Gagnon's major academic post was to be held at the University of New York at Stony Brook between 1968 and 1998, where he became a Distinguished Professor of sociology.
Most recently he held a consultancy with the Laboratory of Robert Grant, Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, San Francisco, California.
Gagnon's autobiographical reflections on his life until 1973 can be found in Authors of Our Own Lives, edited by Bennett Berger (1990).
Gagnon was an NIMH Post Doctoral Fellow in 1972–3, was made a fellow of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex and subsequently received the SSSS lifetime achievement award for research into sexuality in 1981 and was President of the International Academy of Sex Research 1987–8.
He has been on the board of many professional and scientific committees connected with the study of human sexual conduct including the Presidents Commission on Pornography.