Richard Pillard

Richard Colestock Pillard (born 11 October 1933) is a professor of psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine. He was the first openly gay psychiatrist in the United States.

Early life and family

Pillard was born in Springfield, Ohio. He briefly attended Swarthmore College before transferring to Antioch College, where his father Basil H. Pillard was an English professor. Pillard received his B.A. from Antioch.

Chandler Burr reported that Pillard jokes "he is uniquely equipped to investigate whether homosexuality has a biological basis: he, his brother, and his sister are gay, and Pillard believes that his father may have been gay. One of Pillard's three daughters from a marriage early in life is bisexual. This family history seems to invite a biological explanation, and it made Pillard start thinking about the origins of sexual orientation."

He and biologist James D. Weinrich co-authored a paper which found that homosexuality runs in some families.

Publications Lane HL, Pillard RC, Hedberg U (2011). The People of the Eye: Deaf Ethnicity and Ancestry. Oxford University Press US,

Lane HL, Pillard RC (1978). The Wild Boy of Burundi: a study of an outcast child. Random House,