[citation needed] His first venture into gay scholarship was to co-author Greek Love with the numismatist and later convicted child sex offender Walter H. Breen, who wrote under the name J.
[1][2] He abandoned formal academic studies (at Columbia University) but did not obtain a Ph.D. Johansson made himself a master of all the modern European languages (excepting only Basque, Hungarian, and Finnish) as well as of Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic.
[3] He used his linguistic abilities to read deeply and spent much of his life in research libraries, particularly at Columbia, where his extensive knowledge of obscure Slavonic dialects made him a valuable informal resource to scholars in the Russian department.
[3] William Armstrong Percy cites just one example of Johansson's surprising discoveries: while the British Wolfenden Committee was sitting, Johannson unearthed the by-now-famous citation from Sigmund Freud, to the effect that homosexuals were not sick, and sent it off.
As Percy points out, Johansson came to see himself as a model of the Talmudic scholar, and thought it only fair that he should receive room and board in exchange for providing what amounted to an advanced post-graduate education in gay studies, gratis.