These are the Great Names in Gerontology and Geriatrics. Click on each pictures for details on the life and accomplishments of each one of those who made a difference in the study of aging.
Gary Andrews, who died suddenly while staying in Sydney to attend the AAG Council Meeting on Thursday and Friday May 18/19, 2006. Gary was the best known Gerontologist in Australia and arguably around the world for his life long committment to the study of ageing, the support of Gerontology and the role of the AAG – and of the IAGG in less developed countries in particular. He was his active and enthusiastic self at the recent Council Meeting and his direction will be sorely missed. Gary combined, as few others have, a life long committment to research, education, teaching, administration and practice in gerontology. His personal involvement with gerontology and geriatric medicine extended back for close to 50 years – taking up a NSW Department of Health Cadetship in the 1950s to work at Lidcombe Hospital with Dr Sid Sax while Gary was still a medical student and where he became a founding member of the AAG and subsequent Medical Superintendent. He developed Lidcombe from a State Institution for older men to become a leading teaching hospital of the University of Sydney – before embarking on his extraordinary career involving every aspect of ageing in Australia and world wide.
Degrees: 1955: M.D. (Honours), University of Padova, 1956-58: Postdoctoral Fellow in Haematology, University of California at Los Angeles 1958: Specialist in Haematology, University of Padova 1960: Specialist in Cardiology, University of Padova 1969: Specialist in Gerontology and Geriatrics, University of Padova Academic and Hospital Appointments: 1957-65: Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine, University of Padova 1965: Qualification as Teaching Lecturer in Medical Pathology & Clinical Methodology by State Board 1965-73: Associate Professor of Internal Medicine, University of Padova 1969: Qualification as Teaching Lecturer in General Clinical Medicine & Medical Therapy by State Board 1970: Qualification as Teaching Lecturer in Endocrinology by State Board 1975: Full Professor of Gerontology and Geriatrics at the University of Padova 1975-1983: Head, Division of Gerontology and Metabolic Diseases, University of Padova 1976-1992: Director, Postgraduate School in Geriatrics and Gerontology, University of Padova 1977-1983: Director Postgraduate School in Diabetology and Metabolic Diseases, University of Padova 1981- : Full Professor of Internal Medicine, University of Padova 1983- : Head of Department of Internal Medicine, University of Padova Positions in Regional and National Organizations: 1971- : Director of the Padova Center of the Study Group of Metabolic Disease and Arteriosclerosis 1971- : Director of the Regional Center for the Study of Epidemiology and the Prevention of Arteriosclerosis 1981-1993: Vice-President of the Biology and Medicine Committee of the National Research Council (C.N.R.) 1984-1988: President of the Italian Society of Diabetology 1987- : Director of the Center on Aging, National Research Council (CNR) 1989- : President of the Foundation for the Study of Diabetes Complications 1990-1995: President of the Italian Society of Gerontology and Geriatrics 1997- : President of the Italian Society of Osteoporosis and Bone Metabolism Diseases Positions in International Organizations: 1980- : Official Italian Representative on the board of the International Association of Gerontology 1985-1994: Vice-President of the International Atherosclerosis Society 1987- : Coordinator within the Italy-USA Agreement of Scientific and Technologic Cooperation for the areas of Diabetology, Gerontology, and Osteoporosis 1993-1995: Vice-President of the Mediterranean Society for the Study of Diabetes 1993- : President of the Mediterranean Society for the Study of Atherosclerosis 1994-1997: President of the Study Group for Diabetes Eye Complications for the European Association for the Study of Diabetes 1996- : President of the Mediterranean Society for the Study of Diabetes Publications: He is the author of more than 600 scientific articles chiefly regarding metabolic diseases published in major national and international scientific journals.
Gloria Gutman, a Past President (2001-2005) of the IAGG, is an internationally known and respected educator, researcher, consultant and advocate who pioneered the field of gerontology in British Columbia (BC) and Canada. Gloria developed the Gerontology Research Centre and the Department of Gerontology at Simon Fraser University, serving as Director of both for over twenty years. She has authored or edited 20 books and monographs, written over 100 scholarly articles, reports, and chapters, and presented more than 200 papers at learned society meetings. Gloria is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, the Founding President of the Gerontology Association of BC, a two-term president of the Canadian Association on Gerontology (CAG), and a Co-Leader of the BC Network for Aging Research. During her term as IAGG President, the city of Vancouver hosted the prestigious 2001 IAG World Congress. Gloria has made substantial advances for geriatrics and gerontology students through her commitment to the IAGG. She is a founder of gerontology education in Canada and has played a pivotal role in expanding graduate education in gerontology throughout the world. Gloria was responsible for compiling and developing the IAGG website listing of graduate degree programs in gerontology and geriatrics offered worldwide. As part of the IAGG’s Education Initiative (2001-2005), she organized an international workshop on master’s degrees. Gloria is also heavily involved in international efforts to target gerontology and geriatric education to individuals from developing countries. Throughout her involvement with the IAGG, Gloria has also supported the recognition and organization of gerontology and geriatrics students within IAGG member organizations. She recognized the value in having formal national student sections and proposed the creation of the International Council of Gerontology Student Organizations (ICGSO) in 2002. ICGSO remains the international network of national and international student societies in aging and an IAGG standing committee. She also helped establish Student Section Development Grants to foster the creation and growth of new and existing student sections. Her efforts culminated in the inaugural ICGSO meeting at the 2005 IAG World Congress. Gloria gave an international voice to students in member organizations and helped lay the groundwork for students in gerontology and geriatrics to both benefit from and help meaningfully advance the IAGG. Through her professional activities, Gloria has made tremendous contributions to raising the awareness and visibility of issues of concern with respect to our aging population. She is a frequent contributor to popular media, and has become one of Canada’s best known and most sought-after experts on seniors’ issues. Gloria has also moved beyond academia to make exceptional contributions to no less than 45 professional and community organizations developing policy and services for seniors in the province and beyond. She has been recognized for her efforts as the recipient of several major awards, including the Order of BC, the CAG Distinguished Member Award, and the Rosalie Wolf Memorial Elder Abuse Prevention Award (International Category).
Professor and Director – Gerontology Research Centre
Simon Fraser University, Vancouver Campus
#2800 – 515 West Hastings Street Vancouver, B.C. V6B 5K3 Canada
Phone: +1 604 291 5063Fax: +1 604 291 5066Send an emailMore informations
Born in Debrecen (Hajdú county), August 10, 1897. Deceased in Budapest, December 8, 1975.
Physician, special field: pathology, gerontology and forensic medicine.
In 1915, he studied at the Medical University of Budapest, between 1920-1922 at the Medical University of Debrecen and in 1922 graduated as M.D.
In 1915 he was in military service, in 1916 he became a prisoner of war and in 1919, he returned home as a handicapped person.
From 1921 he worked as an assistant, from 1923 as assistant professor at the Institute of Pathology at the Medical University in Debrecen. From 1923 to 1940 he was head physician of the Pathological Department at the Hospital in Baja. From 1933 he was lecturer at the Medical University in Pécs. From 1940 he became professor of pathology and forensic medicine at the Medical University in Kolozsvár and from 1945-1952 at the University of Medicine in Marosvásárhely.
He was a correspondent member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences from 1948, his membership was interrupted between 1949-1955.
In 1952 he was invited by the University of Medicine in Budapest to be director and professor at the 2nd Institute of Pathology and for a period at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, too. He retired in 1967.
He initiated in 1954 the foundation of the Gerontological Committee of the Academy of Sciences, in 1965 the foundation of the Gerontological Research Department and in 1967 the Hungarian Association of Gerontology.
He was president of the Gerontological Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, of the Hungarian Association of Gerontology. He was a member of the Board at the Pathological Association and Association for Forensic Medicine, member of the German Association of Pathology, of the Council of the IAG, of the National Committee of Aging (USA), of the International Academy of Pathology, of the American Association of Ageing Research.
In the course of his wide-ranging work, he was involved with various issues of pathology, biology, gerontology, forensic medicine and medical history.
László Haranghy published 175 articles in international journals, 7 books and book-chapters.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. Lawton received his undergraduate education at Haverford College in Philadelphia and was awarded his doctoral degree in psychology at Columbia University in New York in 1952. In 1963, Dr. Lawton became the Director of the Polisher Research Institute (PRI) at the Philadelphia Geriatric Center (now known as the Madlyn and Leonard Abramson Center for Jewish Life, in North Wales, PA.). Dr. Lawton served as Director of PRI until 1993, and then as Director Emeritus for the next eight years until his premature death in January of 2001. The phrase “gentleman and scholar” perfectly describes Powell’s presence and demeanor. His kindness and integrity, his passion for science and his generosity in sharing his knowledge, his utter lack of pretense were part of the daily fabric of his life. During his career, he authored 27 books, 119 book chapters, 175 peer-reviewed papers, and collaborated with over 110 co-authors. He was awarded 28 research grants from 13 different agencies, including a MERIT award from NIA in 1987 through 1997. Dr. Lawton’s research interests included environment and aging, mental health and aging (e.g. depression incidence, structure, variation, and relationship to various outcomes), health and quality of life (e.g. relationship to functional and cognitive health or intrapersonal, extra-personal, and supra-personal environment), care-giving (e.g. respite, stress and coping, resources, negative emotion and uplifts, ethnic differences), end of life (e.g., valuation of life, quality of life and pain in the last year of life), and the evaluation of community programs aimed at improving the quality of life for elderly people (e.g. housing, excess disability, dementia). In addition to these many topics of research, Dr. Lawton also found the time and intellectual energy to write about financial gerontology, gerontechnology and theeffects of exercise and nutrition on psychological well-being. He served in an editorial capacity for 15 journals, and was the founding editor (1984-1991) of Psychology & Aging and the editor-in-chief of the Annual Review of Gerontology & Geriatrics. Dr. Lawton sat on the advisory committees of over 25 organizations, receiving distinguished service awards from 19 of them, including the Novartis Prize from IAG in 1997. He founded the National Caucus for the Black Aged and served as delegate to the White House Conference on Aging in 1971. Dr. Lawton’s leadership was further demonstrated in his tenure as President of the American Psychological Association in 1970 and as President of the Gerontological Society of America in 1986. A description of Dr. Lawton’s profound impact on the field of gerontology would not be complete without acknowledging his commitment to supporting and mentoring the next generation of gerontologists. Over the course of his career, he advised and guided hundreds of students and young scientists in both large and small ways. His indefatigable enthusiasm and gracious manner, his openness to new ideas and his deeply felt compassion for elderly people inspired and encouraged many young people to pursue gerontological research and practice at a time when it was not fashionable to do so. The objective of Dr. Lawton’s work was to enrich the lives of older people, and he never wavered from this goal.
Dr. Richard Lefroy was born in Perth in 1918, the son of Edward Henry Bruce Lefroy, a pastoralist and a member of one of the long established families of Western Australia, and Beatrice nee Vincent. He was educated at Geelong Grammar School and the University of Oxford. Having been invalided from the British Army, he went to Melbourne where he graduated in medicine in 1946. On return to Perth he was an RMO at Royal Perth Hospital from 1946 to 1948, a General Practitioner from 1948 to 1950 and rejoined Royal Perth Hospital in 1951 as Assistant Medical Superintendant having gained his Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. Practicing as a Physician since 1951, he was appointed as Associate Professor of Medicine with the University Department of Medicine in 1957 and a Consultant to Royal Perth Hospital. Seeing the need of the community for a geriatric medical service, Dr Lefroy was appointed as the inaugural Director of the Public Health Department’s Geriatric Service in 1963. He pioneered the development of geriatric medicine and laid the foundations and structure of today’s services in the state of Western Australia and was one on the founders of geriatric medicine in Australia. Dr Lefroy’s achievements include the development of assessment systems for older people that included functional, social and medical dimensions. He established the first rehabilitation services and day hospitals in the state of Western Australia. He set up geriatrics services based on geographical location of the patients which included community consultation and home visiting as essential components. In 1978, following on the novel ideas of Bobby Irvine and Michael Devas from Hastings in the United Kingdom, he engineered, with Sir George Bedbrook, the creation of an orthogeriatric unit, the first such unit in Australia. He identified the need for Hostel care as well as special dementia units and was fundamental in establishing the first examples of these in Australia. Geriatric services were also energetically delivered to many country areas and his efforts eventually yielded beds for geriatric medicine in teaching hospitals. He began teaching geriatric medicine on retirement in 1982 and the University of Western Australia finally acknowledged it as a separate academic discipline. Dr Lefroy is a past President of both the Australian Geriatric Society and of the Australian Association of Gerontology. He has authored and co-authored numerous papers and book chapters about geriatric medicine and residential care. “Dick” is noted by his colleagues as a brilliant physician but endearingly modest about his achievements. His visits to country areas motivated him to acquire a pilot’s license. To this day he continues to work as an honorary research fellow at University of Western Australia’s School of Population Health, teaches Tai Chi to older people and is a keen cyclist. He is Patron of the Centre of Excellence for Alzheimer’s Disease Research and Care. In his private life he was greatly supported by his wife Betty (Elizabeth nee Lee Steere) and, after her death, by his second wife Jennifer Page. Jennifer has collaborated significantly with Dick in developing aged care services.
Francesco Antonini was born in Florence in 1920, (Florence 22nd January 2008) and graduated in Medicine with maximum degree and hounours in1944. University teacher of Medical Pathology in the 1953. In 1956 he participated in the first national competition to qualify as university teacher in Gerontology and Geriatrics, which was the first academic acknowledgement of this branch, either at a national or international level. in 1957, after qualifying as university teachier, Prof. Antonini was invited by Prof. Enrico Greppi and the Medical Faculty of Florence University to teach Gerontology and Geriatrics disciplines. In 1962, he obtained by the University of Florence the first chair of Gerontology and Geriatrics in the world, and he founded the first specialization School. He has been Director of the Department of Gerontology and Geriatrics of Florence University from 1958 to 1990, when he retired and became Professor Emeritus. In 1968, Prof. Antonini promoted one of the first schools for rehabilitation therapists and, in 1980, he started a “University for the Third Age”. Honorary President of the Italian Society of Gerontology and Geriatrics since 1984. In 1990, the Italian Society of Gerontology and Geriatrics assigned to Prof. Antonini the triennial prize Enrico Greppi with the following motivation “He has been a pioneer in gerontological and geriatric research and has spread its knowledge in social, political and medical fields, so that he was acknowledged as the most authoritative geriatrician in Italy and one of the most renown in the world”.
Guillermo Marroquin-Sanchez who died suddenly while staying in Montevideo (Uruguay) to attend the Latino American Geriatric Meeting on October 27,1982. The professor Marroquin-Sanchez is considered as the “Gerontology and geriatrics Colombian`s father of in Colombia” due was the first geriatrician in the country. His areas of interest were teaching and public politics related with wellbeing of elderly people in Latin America. As a Colombian delegate at the First Geriatric Pan-American Congress held in September 1956 in México City he proposes August 28 as the “Pan American Day of the elder”. This date is still recognized as “El dia del anciano” in several countries of Latin-American. In 1973 he founds the Colombian Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology (SCGG) and was president until his deceased. In 1976 he creates the Journal of the Colombian Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology. He starts directing interdisciplinary continued education courses for professional and non professional individuals. In consequence, he permitted that Colombian academics, government and older people and their families were trained in gerontology and geriatrics areas. In 1996, the Colombian Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics created the Prize Guillermo Marroquin-Sanchez for the best research paper presented in the biennial congress as tribute of him, pioneer in gerontological and geriatric teaching in Colombia. After receiving his MD degree from the Universidad Nacional in Bogotá in 1950 he specializes in the Hospital Central de la Cruz Roja in Madrid, Spain in Geriatrics being the first Colombian doctor certified in geriatrics. He starts working for the Social Institute of the Presidency of the Republic of Colombia, called SENDAS and becomes the first official consultant in aging aspects for the Presidency in 1955.As a Colombian Delegate at the First Geriatric Pan-American Congress held in September 1956 in México City he proposes August 28 as the “Pan American Day of the elder” This date is still recognized as “El día del anciano” in several countries of Latin-American.He lectures regularly as an invited professor in several schools of medicine and other human health disciplines. He founds the Geriatric Culture Courses (Cursos de Gerocultura) directed to workers and patients in different educational, clinical and social institutions in Bogotá. In 1973 he founds the Colombian Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology (SCGG). He was the first president. Later he was the president again during several periods. Actually the Society is active, has grown considerably and is quite active in assistance and educational work. In 1976 he creates the Journal of the Colombian Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology. To date the journal is still published regularly. During the next decade his work is directed to strengthen the activities of the SCGG and its Journal. He starts directing interdisciplinary continued education courses for professional and non professional individuals. His lectures are attended by several Medical Schools of the country. He was the official delegate for Colombia to the First World Meeting for the Aging, held in Viena in 1982. By this time he has been named honorific member of several Geriatric and Gerontology Societies in Latin America and Spain.
Lynn McDonald is recognized nationally and internationally as an educator, researcher, scholar, and advocate who helped to pioneer the field of gerontology in Canada. In 2002, she was awarded the Governor General’s Golden Jubilee Medal for her contributions to gerontology. As an educator, Lynn is a founder of gerontology training in Canada. This is illustrated in her current position as Director, Institute for Life Course and Aging, University of Toronto. Undergraduate, graduate, and post doctoral students, from a range of disciplines find an environment within the Institute that fosters their learning and challenges them to think “outside the box” as they explore issues faced by older adults and those who work with them. Lynn has provided numerous opportunities for students to be mentored, laying the groundwork for them to develop their careers and to prepare them to make future contributions to the field of knowledge of aging and the needs of older adults. Lynn, as a researcher, was presented in 2007 with the first Betty Haven Award for Longitudinal Research from the Canadian Association on Gerontology. This was in recognition of her commitment and passion for longitudinal research. Lynn is currently Scientific Director of one of only five Networks of Centres for Excellence in this country. Through her involvement with the National Initiative for Care of the Elderly (NICE), she has emphasized the dissemination of knowledge / best practices to promote quality of life for older adults, especially those with health and social needs. Her commitment to student learning is also evident, as she has initiated their involvement in NICE on a number of different levels, including full committee and board membership. As a scholar, Lynn has authored or edited numerous books and journals, written numerous scientific articles, and presented at a diversity of professional conferences. One recent example is her keynote presentation at the November 2007 Annual Scientific and Education Meeting of the Canadian Association on Gerontology. She captivated the audience with her comments. Throughout her professional career, Lynn has made enormous contributions to raising the awareness and visibility of issues of concern with respect to our aging population. She is a frequent contributor to popular media. One recent example is her research work on advancing public awareness of the issues of homelessness and older adults. Another example is her current position on the Board of Directors for the International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse. She has been instrumental in drawing the serious problem of Elder Abuse into public awareness.
Professor Osvaldo Prieto has been a founder and first chairman of the Gerontology and Geriatric Cuban Society and founder head director of the Iberoamerican Center of the third Age, the Institute of Geriatric in Cuba. He promoted the development of Geriatric and Gerontology in our country , and from his post as director of this centre in the past 14 year , he has been instrumental in the formation of graduates and masters during that time. He created new ways for the care of elderly people in community centres which have become regular practice in the primary health care of the whole country. In his role as chairman of The Geriatric Cuban Society, he started the national congresses of the field and has been the chairman of COMLAT for a period of 4 years.
Centro Iberomericano de la Tercera Edad (CITED)
Calle G y 27, Vedado
Cuidad de la Habana
CUBA
Phone: +537- 552164Fax: +537- 333319Send an emailVisit their websiteMore informations