The Longevity Revolution

Physician, gerontologist, psychiatrist, public servant, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Why Survive Being Old in America, ROBERT N. BUTLER, M.D. is president and CEO of The International Longevity Center-USA (ILC-USA), which he founded in 1990. Today, there are ILC centers in Tokyo, London, Paris, and a dozen other countries, all conducting studies of the impact of the unprecedented aging of populations upon society and its institutions. In 1975, Butler became founding director of the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health, and in 1982 he founded the first department of geriatrics in a U.S. medical school at The Mount Sinai Medical Center.

Whether through his many appearances in front of the United States Congress, or his hundreds of interviews with the media, Dr. Butler has worked tirelessly for decades to push population-aging issues into the public discourse. As a gerontologist and psychiatrist, Dr. Butler recognized discrimination against the elderly as early as 1968, coining the term “ageism.”

Library Journal's Karen McNally Bensing interviews Dr. Butler >

A Pulitzer Prize Winning Author

The publication of Dr. Butler's book Why Survive? Being Old in America solidified his reputation as someone who foresaw the impact that aging would have on American society. Indeed, Why Survive? went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in the nonfiction category in 1976.

He is coauthor with Myrna I. Lewis and Trey Sunderland Aging and Mental Health and with Myrna I. Lewis of The New Love & Sex After 60. He was medical editor-in-chief of Geriatrics, a journal for primary care physicians, from 1986 to 2000.

Dr. Butler was also a principal investigator of one of the first comprehensive 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.

Founder of the Nation's First Geriatrics Department

A founding director of the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Butler also founded the nation’s first department of geriatrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

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.

Dr. Butler often consults for television and radio. He is the author of some 300 scientific and medical articles.