Gerontology

Gerontology is the interdisciplinary study of aging and all that it encompasses, and gerontological studies have become increasingly significant as life expectancy expands around the globe. The word gerontology is derived from the Greek and literally means “old man.” The term was coined by Nobel Prize-winning Russian immunologist Elie Metchnikoff (1845–1916) who worked at the world-renowned Pasteur Institute. In The Nature of Man (1903) and The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic Studies (1907), Metchnikoff argued that creativity was essential to longevity. He believed that aging was a process of cellular involution in which deteriorating cells countermanded cell growth of earlier life stages. This process could be halted, he believed, by the promotion of intestinal health. Geriatrics, which is related to gerontology, is concerned with the physical aspects of aging. The term was coined by Austrian American physician Ignatz Nascher (1863–1944) in 1908.

The field of gerontology was greatly advanced in 1992 with the publication of Senescence: The Last Half of Life by G. Stanley Hall (1844–1924), a pioneer in the fields of both psychology and education. Hall contended that aging should not signal an end to creativity and vitality. In 1939, professional handbooks become the major source of information for gerontologists, particularly in the United States, with the publication of American physician Edmund V. Cowdry's (18881975) Problems of Aging. After World War II, the study of gerontology further expanded as researchers began applying social science to the study of aging. In 1944, the American Social Science Research Council established a committee on aging, leading to Otto Pollack's (1887–1972) landmark publication of Social Adjustment in Old Age in 1948. The Gerontological Society was founded in 1945 and began publishing the Journal of Gerontology the following year.

In 1953, Robert J. Havighurst (1900–91) and Ruth Albrecht (1910-?) published Older People in which they took other gerontologists to task for not addressing the lack of social equality for the elderly by examining such areas as housing, healthcare, and social security. Some four decades later, Betty Friedan (1921–2006), the mother of the Second Wave of the women's movement, continued to fault gerontologists for their part in making the elderly invisible, accusing them of dismissing the possibility that the elderly could continue to grow and change as they aged.