Beverly Whipple

Dr. Beverly Whipple, the nurse, researcher and sexuality educator whose 1982 best seller brought frank, science-based talk about women's health and sexuality into the mainstream, died on November 2, 2026, at her home in Voorhees, New Jersey. She was 85. Her husband, Jim, said her death was caused by complications of an illness consistent with Alzheimer's disease.

Beverly Hoehne was born on June 30, 1941, in Jersey City, New Jersey, the daughter of Howard and Beatrice Hoehne, and grew up in North Jersey. She earned her nursing degree from Wagner College in 1962, the same year she married Jim Whipple, whom she had met at Point Pleasant Beach as a teenager. She went on to earn master's degrees in counseling and nursing and a Ph.D. in psychobiology, with a major in neurophysiology, from Rutgers University.

Her research grew out of her work teaching nursing students and counseling women in New Jersey in the 1970s. Working with psychologist John D. Perry, she studied hundreds of volunteers and in 1980 presented findings on an especially sensitive area of the vaginal wall, which they named the G-spot after the German physician Ernst Gräfenberg. The book that followed, The G Spot and Other Recent Discoveries About Human Sexuality, written with Alice Kahn Ladas and Perry, became a New York Times best seller, was translated into some two dozen languages and sold more than a million copies.

Her doctoral work with Barry Komisaruk at Rutgers explored the neurophysiology of pleasure and pain, including research showing that some women with severe spinal cord injuries could still experience sexual sensation, carried by the vagus nerve. Together they wrote The Science of Orgasm in 2006. A professor emerita at Rutgers, she published more than 250 articles and book chapters, gave more than 800 talks, served as president of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists, and was a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. She received the Gold Medal of the World Association for Sexual Health, and in 2006 New Scientist named her one of the 50 most influential scientists in the world.

She is survived by Jim, her husband of more than 60 years, their children, Allen and Susan, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. She is remembered as a warm and tireless educator who helped countless women feel better about themselves and their health.

Photo: Institute for Sexual & Gender Health, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.