Dr Ruth Westheimer - Infinite Women

Born: 4 June 1928, Germany
Died: 12 July 2024
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Karola Siegel, Dr Ruth

The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.

Like many of the greats, Dr. Ruth Westheimer was known by many by her first name alone. Dr. Ruth revolutionized attitudes around sex, breaking taboos and encouraging open and honest conversations about such a fundamental part of many people’s lives.
Born in 1928 in Germany, Westheimer’s orthodox Jewish family would soon be endangered by the rise of Nazism in the country. Her father was taken when she was ten and her mother and grandmother sent her to a children’s home in Switzerland for her own safety. Their letters stopped in 1941; like many of the other children, she never saw her parents again.
At 17, she moved to Palestine, joining the Haganah Jewish underground to fight for Israeli independence, and was trained as a sniper and scout. But only three weeks after Israel declared independence in 1948, she was seriously injured by an exploding shell. After a long period of healing, she moved to Paris where she would study psychology at the Sorbonne, teach kindergarten, and divorce her first husband in 1955. The next year, she moved to New York, earning her Master’s in sociology and divorcing her second husband. She married again in the early 1960s.
Joining Planned Parenthood in the 1960s in Harlem, she became project director in 1967, and in 1970, earned her doctorate via night classes at Columbia, where she studied with the pioneering sex therapist Helen Singer Kaplan. She began teaching at Lehman College as an associate professor of sex counseling, and would also teach at Brooklyn College, Adelphi University, Columbia, West Point, New York University, Yale, and Princeton, and as well as being a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine.
After delivering a lecture to New York broadcasters on the need for more sex education programming, WYNY-FM’s Betty Elam gave Westheimer the chance to put her money where her mouth was—specifically, $25 a week to host Sexually Speaking, a 15-minute recorded program that debuted in 1980 in an after-midnight slot. This late-night show from a struggling station pulled in better ratings than prime-time major channels, and within a year was an hour-long, live call-in show. She appeared on Late Night With David Letterman in 1982 and soon had her own national cable program, The Dr. Ruth Show, with her Ask Dr. Ruth radio program broadcast nationally and internationally. Speaking French and Hebrew in addition to her English and German, she was able to do interviews in multiple languages and also had a weekly series on Israeli TV. She published dozens of books, including Dr. Ruth’s Encyclopedia of Sex (1994) and Sex for Dummies (1995), and hosted a variety of programs under different titles over the decades. She wrote a column syndicated in newspapers around the world and helped develop games, videos, and software, as well as being the subject of a 2019 documentary, Ask Dr. Ruth.
In addition to her knowledge and empathy, her personality and appearance were beneficial in raising her profile: her enthusiasm, her diminutive height at 4’7”, her German accent, and her grandmotherly appearance made her both recognizable and approachable. She even made appearances on the hit sci-fi TV show Quantum Leap (1985) and as “Dr. Ruth Weisenheimer” in The Dark Knight Returns (1986), and sang with Tom Chapin on This Pretty Planet (1996). As The Guardian noted in her obituary, “she never took herself seriously, and was happy to parody herself and her messages in advertisements for cars and shampoo.” She gave the impression of someone who loved life—and wanted you to love it, too.

The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).

1928, June 4 Born Karola Ruth Siegel in Wiesenfeld (Karlstadt am Main), Germany
1939 Sent to Heiden, Switzerland, on a Kindertransport
1945 Immigrated to British Mandate Palestine
1948 Served with the Haganah in the Arab-Israeli War
1950 Married first husband (divorced circa 1955). Moved to France
1952-1956 Studied psychology at the Université de Paris (Sorbonne)
1956 Immigrated to the United States
1957 Married second husband (divorced circa 1958). Birth of daughter Miriam Westheimer
1959 M.A., sociology, New School for Social Research, New York, N.Y.
1961 Married Manfred Westheimer (died 1997)
1963 Birth of son Joel Westheimer
1965 Naturalized as U.S. citizen
1967-circa 1970 Worked for Planned Parenthood of Greater New York
1970 Ed.D., family-life studies, Teachers College of Columbia University, New York, N.Y.
circa 1977 Certificate, psychosexual therapy, Cornell University Medical College (under Helen Singer Kaplan)
1980-1990 Host, Sexually Speaking, WYNY-FM (NBC) Radio
1983 Published Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex. New York: Warner Books
1984-1991 Host, Good Sex! with Dr. Ruth Westheimer and other related programs, Lifetime Television Network
1985 Published First Love: A Young People’s Guide to Sexual Information. New York: Warner Books. Released Dr. Ruth’s Game of Good Sex. Victory Games. Released Terrific Sex: The Dr. Ruth Video. Warner Video
1986 Premiere of “Ask Dr. Ruth” newspaper advice column
1987 Published All in a Lifetime. New York: Warner Books (re-released 2001)
2024, July 12 Died, New York, N.Y.