A Brief History...

written in 1995, the 50th anniversary of The Gerontological Society of America)

GSA's Beginnings and Development of the Journals

Annual Meetings - Society's ShowcaseMaking a Difference

Helping Establish NIA
WHCoAs
Leading the Intergenerational Debate
Ensuring Quality Data
Bringing Attention to Minority Aging Issues
The National Academy on an Aging Society
Advancing the Field

The Changing Face of Membership

Student Members

Structural Evolution

GSA's Beginnings and Development of the Journals

The Gerontological Society of America was established in 1945 to promote the scientific study of aging, to encourage exchanges among researchers and practitioners from various disciplines related to gerontology, and to foster the use of gerontological research in forming public policy.

While the Society has grown in numbers and scope along with the field, the founding mission remains the Society's principal concern today.

The founders of the Society were pioneers in establishing gerontology as a legitimate area of research, and those who joined the Society since then have labored long and hard to bring the science and study of gerontology to the stature that it deserves and has achieved. GSA members have succeeded in exploding the myths of the frail and dependent aged, demonstrated their potential, and attacked the scientific, medical and political barriers for a healthier and more productive old age. From biology to medicine, from social work to psychology, from architecture to law, GSA members in the past 50 years have contributed greatly to the body of gerontological knowledge and science.

The evolution of the Society began in 1939 when a group of 24 scientists and physicians, some of them participants at a 1937 Woods Hole conference, formed the Club for Research on Ageing.

On May 18, 1945, with World War II coming to a close, Earl T. Engle, Lawrence K. Frank, Jean Oliver, Oscar Riddle and Henry S. Simms met in New York City to sign the certificate to incorporate the Gerontological Society, to "promote the scientific study of aging." The Society's first president was William deB. MacNider, professor of pharmacology at the University of North Carolina.

The charter set the tone and composition of the Society as a multidisciplinary enterprise to not only promote the study of aging, but also to encourage exchanges among researchers and practitioners from various disciplines related to gerontology.

Even though the Society was incorporated in New York City and remained incorporated in that city until 1980, its first home was St. Louis. Its first "office" was a single desk at Washington University Medical School. Its only employee was an editorial assistant to Robert Moore, chairman of Washington University Department of Pathology and the first editor of the Journal of Gerontology, reflecting the fledgling organization's main thrust -- a publication in gerontology.

The single-desk office eventually became two rooms (rent free) at the Washington University Medical School and remained the Society's Central Office until its migration to Washington, DC, in 1969.

The Society nurtured its multidisciplinary concept by creating opportunities and mediums to engage in scholarly exchanges.

The primary activity that was envisoned in those early years was a journal. In 1944, members of the Club for Research on Ageing formed a Committee on Journal to explore starting a gerontological publication when the war ended, that would be a prime medium for scholarly exchanges. In 1945, the founders conceived the Journal of Gerontology and a year later the first issue was published. The Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation provided a $4,000 grant as seed money to begin publication of the journal and continued its support until 1950. In 1952, the Forest Park Foundation provided funds to support the Journal and the 1951 International Association of Gerontology (IAG) publications. The Forest Park Foundation continued its support of the Journal and the Index to Current Periodical Literature (the first such index) through 1962.

The Journal of Gerontology was the first, and for many years the only, U.S. gerontological research journal.

The first issue of the Journal of Gerontology was published in January 1946 and the cover sported the slogan, "To add life to years, not just years to life." Lawrence Frank, one of the charter members, writing in the first issue noted that "Gerontology emerges...as a response to...scientific needs and opportunities." He added that the Journal of Gerontology, "the first journal in the field, will provide a medium of communication and of interpretation in our effort to gain more and surer knowledge of human growth development."

In June 1954, the Society began publication of the "Newsletter of the Gerontological Society." The four-page publication carried news about the Society, its members and its activities. By 1956, it was up to eight pages and the following year some issues were 12 pages.

The first major changes to the Journal of Gerontology were made in 1955. It was divided into three sections: (1) Biological Sciences and Health Sciences; (2) Psychological and Social Sciences, Social Work and Administration; and (3) Organization Section and the Index to Current Periodical Literature. Nathan W. Shock was responsible for this latter section from 1950 to 1980, and during that period he indexed over 71,000 citations.

In 1961, the Journal of Gerontology replaced its three section divisions with two new sections: Biological and Medical Sciences, and Research in Psychological and Social Sciences. The third section of the Journal of Gerontology, dealing with the organization, was moved to the new publication, The Gerontologist.

In 1973 the Society began discussing splitting the Journal of Gerontology into four journals. But it took more than a decade and a half for the change to take place.

In 1974, the Society's two publications began bimonthly publication, to provide members a Society journal every month.

The Gerontologist has also experienced significant changes in its look and outlook over the years. While it has always maintained its multidisciplinary perspectives, its earlier focus on practice has evolved into applied research and analysis in gerontology, including social policy, program development and service delivery. Other regular features of the journal include essay-style book reviews, audio visual reviews, Practice Concepts and the Forum, which features review articles or well-documented arguments on a topical issue.

The Journal of Gerontology, which began as one journal, was reorganized in 1988 as four separate journals, each with its own Editor and Editorial Board, but issued under one cover.

The latest metamorphosis of the Journals of Gerontology took place in 1995 when the four journals were split into two covers: the Journals of Gerontology: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences under one cover, and the Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences under another.

The Society's newest publication, The Public Policy and Aging Report, was added in 1995, with Robert Hudson as its first editor. The Report, a quarterly policy newsletter published by the National Academy on an Aging Society (GSA's independent policy institute), examines policy issues associated with the aging society. The publication is targeted to those outside the academic and traditional aging communities.

In 50 years, GSA has moved from publishing one journal to publishing five. In spite of continually expanding pages, the journals struggle to keep up with the ever growing number of manuscripts submitted. And GSA's journals, once the only ones published in the field, have been joined by many other journals publishing research on aging.

Annual Meetings - Society's Showcase

If the journals are the Society's most visible products, then the annual scientific meetings must surely be its most visible activity. The annual meetings showcase the vibrancy and the extent of gerontological research. From its very humble beginnings when the first meeting was held in New York on January 8-9, 1946, to the large gatherings in the 1990s, the Society's Annual Scientific Meeting gives gerontologists the forum that they need to report on their work, to meet with others working in the field and to attend seminars and discussions on current issues and cutting edge research. At the first meeting at the Hotel Commodore in New York some 50 scientists and researchers were present. At the 1995 meeting in Los Angeles over 3,300 attended. The first meeting was held over a period of two days and just 24 papers were presented. In 1995 there were 395 sessions spread over five days with many sessions running concurrently.

The Society's annual meeting is the oldest and largest gathering devoted to gerontological research. It is an event that is eagerly awaited by the scientific and research community and by the media.

As early as 1946, the Gerontological Society was in the forefront of advancing gerontological research. Just one year after its establishment, GSA successfully advocated the creation of a Gerontological Study Section at the U.S. Public Health Service. Eight of the ten Section members were charter members of the Society.

The Society's role in policymaking and in the training of health care professionals prompted GSA President Leo Gitman to note in 1964 that "the Society is increasingly being called upon to assume a leadership role in the formulation of research policy in gerontology."

By the 1970s, the Society, now a key and influential player on the Washington scene, strongly supported a 1961 White House Conference on Aging recommendation to establish a National Gerontological Institute, to include the research activities of the Gerontology Research Center in Baltimore. The next year, the Society reviewed and supported legislation for a National Institute on Aging (NIA). Several members of the GSA, who were prominently identified with the Society, became founding members of NIA's National Advisory Council. They included: Harold Brody, Carl Eisdorfer, George Maddox and Bernice Neugarten.

On May 31, 1974, President Nixon signed legislation to create the National Institute on Aging. GSA President Ethel Shanas, in her report to Council that year, said, "The enactment of this legislation was the culmination of a concerted effort on the part of many members of the two scientific organizations, the American Geriatrics Society and the Gerontological Society, and the mass organizations of older people." The Society, along with the American Geriatrics Society, assisted in developing a policy statement on the role of NIA.

The Society was a principal player in the development and organization of the 1971 White House Conference on Aging (WHCoA), including the development of a multi-media opening session and a post-conference international symposium. GSA hosted 37 scientific and professional observers, representing every continent, to the WHCoA. Following the conference, the observers spent one week looking at needs, priorities and issues of cross-national and cross-cultural research. The findings were synthesized into a monograph and published as a special supplement to The Gerontologist.

GSA was initially one of the few organizations opposing the 1995 WHCoA. The Society felt that forums held at the state and community levels were a more effective mechanism to discuss and debate issues of health, housing, transportation, nutrition, social services, and other important issues of the day. Bringing 3,000 or so older Americans in for a White House Conference on Aging to discuss issues already familiar to older consumers, aging organizations, and the federal government, GSA posited, was not a productive use of federal funds.

When the Clinton Administration called for a 1995 White House Conference on Aging, the Society Society decided that if there was going to be a conference, the Society could help in developing a structure that would ensure a meaningful meeting. Following the announcement, the Society was out of the gates and running, conducting the first officially sanctioned WHCoA event. GSA, with a grant from The Retirement Research Foundation and under the leadership of its Public Policy Committee, held four forums with researchers and educators and four focus groups of older people across the country to begin the process of defining the WHCoA agenda.

In 1984, the Society, with support from the John A. Hartford Foundation, American Association of Retired Persons (AARP)-Andrus Foundation, the Allied-Signal Corporation, and the National Institute on Aging, launched a program to link research results and agendas to the emerging issues in aging. Intergenerational equity, a particularly "hot" and timely topic, was selected as the focus of the first project. Dr. Eric Kingson of the University of Maryland was hired to direct the program, which culminated in two publications, Ties That Bind: The Interdependence of Generations, a book, and a shorter, more popularized piece entitled The Common Stake.

The reports, particularly The Common Stake, filled an important gap in the intergenerational debate. It was the first articulated framework for properly understanding and analyzing the issues. Heavy demand for The Common Stake led to a reprinting in 1987.

A Task Force on Data on Aging that has played a critical role on data issues was also created in 1984. One of its first activities was to develop a paper documenting changes taking place in the availability of federal data on aging. A second report was issued the following year that examined the potential impact of Congressional proposals to curtail programs that collected data and prepared reports on the older population.

In 1985, in an effort to gather more useful data on the aging and elderly U.S. population, the Task Force developed recommendations for the 1990 census, many of which were adopted by the Census Bureau. The recommendations included both questions to be asked and reports and materials to be produced.

Other Task Force activities over the years have included helping organize a hearing on the importance of federal statistical programs and preparing a white paper for the incoming Bush administration on the vital role data could play in developing public policy for an aging society.

The study of aging until recently was primarily the study of older whites. One of the Society's first efforts to bring minority aging research into the mainstream was a pre-annual meeting workshop held at its 1972 meeting in San Juan. Author Harry Golden addressed the opening session of the workshop, "Black Aged in the Future." Other participants at the workshop included Jacquelyne Jackson, Richard Kalish, Hobart Jackson, Nathaniel Calloway and Walter Beattie.

Based on groundwork laid by the Society's Social Research, Planning and Practice (SRPP) Task Force on Minority Issues, Council in 1987 made a major commitment to minority aging issues. A Society-wide Task Force, under the leadership of Dr. James S. Jackson, was created and has played an influential role within and outside the Gerontological Society to bring greater attention and resources to minority aging issues. The Task Force adopted three primary objectives: (1) to encourage more quality research on minority aging; (2) to increase the number of minority researchers; and (3) to expand the participation of minority members in GSA leadership.

In 1989, the Society received a two-year grant from the Administration on Aging to help carry out its minority aging agenda. A publication produced as part of the grant, Minority Elders: Longevity, Economics, and Health, has been instrumental in identifying critical areas of research needed to build a public policy base. Three years later the book was republished as an expanded edition that included an annotated bibliography of articles pertaining to research on minority issues published in the Society's journals.

Evidence of the success of the Task Force's efforts can be readily seen in the dramatic increase in the number of annual meeting papers and sessions that address minority aging issues—jumping from a mere 23 in 1987 to more than 200 in 1994.

In 1994, through a cooperative agreement with the Administration on Aging, the Society established the National Academy on Aging as a free-standing public policy institute. The Academy's mission is to promote education, research, and public understanding of the well-being of present and future older persons. The Academy offers a neutral forum to evaluate the public policy implications of the longer lives and growing proportion of older persons in our society.

In its early years, GSA, like the field it represented, was something of an experiment. The organization addressed a newly recognized phenomenon. There were no road maps to guide those early researchers -- virtually everything that was being done was being done for the first time. There were no departments of gerontology or geriatrics in universities, no National Institute on Aging, no Older Americans Act, no Center on Aging at the National Institute of Mental Health. In short, there were no major focal points for either aging research and education or aging policies.

Fifty years later, the field and the Gerontological Society have changed to meet changing circumstances.

The Changing Face of Membership

Much has happened since GSA was first created, and in many ways the development of the organization parallels the changes that have taken place not only in the field of aging but also in society at large. When GSA was founded, it was essentially the "only game in town." The Society's membership mirrored the larger scientific world. GSA's founding "fathers" were white males, primarily from the biomedical sciences; Ollie Randall was the first and lone female member. In 1954, when Ollie Randall was elected GSA's first female president, women began to be more visible in the leadership. Many of these women were recognized for their contributions through the Society's awards program, including Bernice Neugarten (Kleemeier and Brookdale), Ethel Shanas (Brookdale and Kleemeier), Ollie Randall (Kent), Wilma Donahue (Kent), and Elaine Brody (Kent).

Today, the typical GSA member is a white female in her mid 40s who is likely to be conducting applied social science research. The research areas now addressed by GSA members extend well beyond the Society's initial biomedical boundaries. More than 30 disciplines are now represented among GSA's membership; nurses are the fastest growing segment.

Student Members

At the 15th Annual Scientific Meeting in San Francisco in 1960, Council decided to create a category of student membership so that students could receive the Journal of Gerontology at "a reduced fee." In 1961, the dues were set at $2.50, including a subscription to The Gerontologist and the option to subscribe to the Journal for half price.

Thirty-five years later students are a vibrant and growing segment of the Society with a voice on Council and representation throughout the GSA structure. Student membership in 1995 totals over 1,000, or about one-sixth of the membership.

Over the years, the student leadership has organized special annual meeting programs and activities, including "Words From the Wise," a session featuring a panel of distinguished gerontologists to share what they think the next generation of scholars ought to know. They also have helped stimulate the development of student awards and established a mentorship program to link students with more seasoned professionals. More recently they have established an on-line network for students to communicate and share information on a regular basis.

Structural Evolution

One of the major challenges for the Gerontological Society is creating a structure that capitalizes on the diversity of its membership and at the same time addresses its members' academic and professional needs and concerns.

Of the 80 members in 1946, according to historian Andrew Achenbaum, 43 joined the Health Sciences section, 9 came from anatomy and pathology, 7 from physiology, 4 from biochemistry, and one from botany; there were 6 psychologists, 5 sociologists, and 2 from social work; only 3 were listed in the "general" category. Six years later, clinicians and medical researchers made up 46 percent of GSA's membership; biological scientists, another 26 percent.

The growing pains of the Society were evident in the President's (Ernest W. Burgess) Report in 1951. "Though the Society is six years old," he said, "[it] is still in the evolutionary stage. Our place in modern society has not been completely established. We ourselves do not know exactly how we should operate, what we should do, and where we should lead."

Burgess added that "the time has come to reorganize the sections." He suggested that the Society adopt four sections corresponding to those of the International Congress, and urged members to take action to retain the "essential multidisciplinary approach of gerontology."

In 1952 a four-section configuration was instituted. Two basic science sections (Biological Sciences and Psychological & Social Sciences) and two applied sections (Social Work & Administration, and Health Sciences). While the names changed several times over the course of the next 43 years, the four sections remained essentially the same. What really has changed is the distribution of members across the sections.

By 1956 the Society had 1,064 members. Of these, 37 percent belonged to Health Sciences; 18 percent to Social Work and Administration; 16 percent to Biological Sciences; 15 percent to Psychological and Social Sciences; and the remaining 14 percent to General Section.

Today, the Behavioral and Social Sciences Section is the largest section, claiming 46 percent of the membership, with the next largest section being the Health Sciences Section at 23 percent. The Social Research, Policy and Practice (the renamed Social Work & Administration Section) has 21 percent of the membership, Biological Sciences 7 percent.

One of the most successful efforts toward multidisciplinary exchanges has been the Interest Groups program. The program was established by Council in 1988 as a mechanism to encourage multidisciplinary discussions and networking around particular topics in aging, and to help attract new members and more attendees to the annual meeting. Ten Interest Groups met at the 1989 annual meeting. Today, there are 22 Interest Groups and another 6 proposed, involving more than 800 participants.