Celebrating Dr. Butler: ILC’s Founder Dies at 83

The International Longevity Center’s founding president and CEO, Robert N. Butler, M.D., died July 4, 2010 at the age of 83. A memorial service in his honor will be held on September 29, 2010. The ILC-USA was Dr. Butler’s vision when first organized in the early 1990s—and its programs on healthy aging, productive engagement and combating ageism were his driving goals.

Dr. Butler was widely regarded as “the father of geriatrics,” for his leadership in the field aging and longevity. Once a bench scientist at the National Institutes of Health and originally trained as a psychiatrist, he was tapped to be the first director of the National Institute of Aging and there helped shape the nation’s aging policy for more than a generation. His seminal book, Why Survive? On Aging America won the Pulitzer Prize and was one of the first comprehensive examinations of what became the Age Wave driven by long-living Baby Boomers. A scholar and author who wrote several books ranging from popular guides on health to medical school textbooks and learned monographs, he introduced such concepts as healthy aging and ageism, among others.

He also initiated the Life Review as a therapeutic device, drawing on older persons’ desire to reminisce.

From the NIA, he became the founding chair of the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York—the nation’s first in a medical school. Subsequently, he founded and led the International Longevity Center first at Mount Sinai and subsequently as an independent non-profit in its own headquarters form 1998 to 2010. He had many honors—national and international, including the coveted Heinz Foundation Prize. He encouraged and helped organize ILC’s in 11 countries and was involved in three White House Conferences on Aging under three U.S. presidents.

His most recent book, The Longevity Prescription was published in June by Avery/Penguin. He championed the diffusion of knowledge in all the aging disciplines and professions urging its practical use to solve problems.

Dr. Butler is most identified with a view of aging as a great human achievement, not simply a problem to be solved. Know for his openness to all knowledge and ideas he supported work on aging not just in science and medicine, but in the social sciences and humanities as well. A public intellectual, he made frequent appearances in the media to explain new findings—and encourage the public to better understand, embrace and celebrate aging. The Board, Management and Staff of the ILC-USA, its sister centers around the world and various task forces and committees mourn his loss while saluting his monumental influence.