Robert N Butler, MD

The International Longevity Center-USA's President & CEO Robert N. Butler, M.D. was a principal investigator of one of the first interdisciplinary, comprehensive, longitudinal studies of healthy community-residing older persons, conducted at the National Institute of Mental Health (1955-1966), resulting in the landmark book "Human Aging".

The study found that many things attributed to old age are in fact a function of disease, social-economic adversity, and even personality. This resulted in a different vision of old age -- setting the stage for today's concepts of "productive aging" and "successful aging."

Identifying Alzheimer's Disease as a National Priority

This early research helped establish the fact that senility is not inevitable with aging, but rather, a consequence of disease. Later, at the National Institute on Aging, Dr. Butler identified Alzheimer's disease as a national research priority. In addition, Dr. Butler helped found the Alzheimer's Disease Association, the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, the American Federation for Aging Research, and the Alliance for Aging Research.

Establishing the ILC-USA

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author

In 1976, Dr. Butler won the Pulitzer Prize in the nonfiction category for "Why Survive? Being Old in America". He is coauthor with Myrna I. Lewis and Trey Sunderland of "Aging and Mental Health" (5th edition, Allyn & Bacon, 1998) and with Myrna I. Lewis of "The New Love & Sex After 60" (4th edition, 2002). He was medical editor-in-chief of "Geriatrics", a journal for primary care physicians, from 1986 to 2000. Dr. Butler often consults for television and radio. He is the author of some 300 scientific and medical articles.

Advisor to Numerous Organizations

Dr. Butler has been a frequent advisor to the World Health Organization. He was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1979. He is also a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. He was a member of the Physician Payment Review Commission, an agency of the U.S. Congress, 1986-89.

He is a founding Fellow of the American Geriatrics Society and vice-chairman of the Alliance for Aging Research. He served as Chair, Advisory Committee, 1995 White House Conference on Aging. He has served as member (1986-) and then Chair (1994-) of the Advisory Committee of the Metropolitan Life Foundation Awards for Medical Research. He is a member of the Advisory Committee, Project on Death In America of the Open Society Institute (George Soros, Founder).

He has been a consultant to the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, the Commonwealth Fund, the Brookdale Foundation, the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation and numerous other organizations. He has served on the National Advisory Committees of the Physicians for Human Rights, the National Women's Health Resource Center and the Mildred and Claude Pepper Foundation, among other organizations.

During his career as a physician, Dr. Butler has had a variety of experiences in health and human services, including public health work, biomedical research, private medical practice, administration and management, and academe, including:

• honorary degrees from the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) and the University of Southern California as well as numerous other awards
  
• introducing the concepts of "Life Review" (1961), "Ageism" (1968) and "Productive Aging" (1983)
  
• involvement in research planning for the NIH women's health research initiative
  
• serving on various biotechnology and financial advisory boards such as Neurogen and Scudder-Stevens - AARP
  
• working on a book "The Longevity Revolution"
  
• member of the Cosmos Club (Washington, D.C.) and the Century Club (New York)