Bruce Voeller

Bruce Raymond Voeller (1934 to 1994) was an American biologist and researcher, primarily in the field of AIDS, and a gay rights activist. Born in Minneapolis and raised in Oregon, he graduated from Reed College in 1956, held a five-year fellowship at the Rockefeller Institute and earned a doctorate in biology in 1961. He became an associate professor at the Rockefeller Institute in 1966, researching phytocytology and plant physiology. In 1973 he co-founded the National Gay Task Force and directed it until 1978, and in 1977 the task force held the first meeting between openly gay and lesbian leaders and the White House. He also founded the Mariposa Foundation, which specializes in sex research and sexually transmitted diseases, and within the first few years of the AIDS pandemic he coined the term acquired immune deficiency syndrome.