British Society for Research on Ageing

More recently the society has begun to directly fund research into the biology of ageing, including funding of £54,750 to the end of a three-year PhD studentship at the University of Liverpool's Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease[3] The society currently organises at an annual scientific meeting[2] and contributes to the activities of other organisations with similar goals on an ad hoc basic.

Sample scientific meetings include: The official journal of the society is Biogerontology[10] and members are urged to publish here whenever possible.

Membership of the BSRA is open to those engaged in, directing, or interested in research to increase knowledge of the processes, causes and effects of ageing, both in human beings and in other organisms.

Typical candidates for membership are either qualified to doctoral level in a relevant scientific subject or working towards such a qualification (e.g. a PhD student).

The original award of honorary life membership was accompanied by a gift (the sum of one guinea per member of the executive committee).

Conceived by Richard Faragher and noted jewellery designer Clara Vichi, the badge incorporates a stylised shell motif and the initials of the British Society for Research on Ageing.

Similarly, the membership of the BSRA study the biology of ageing in very different ways but share the common goal of creating a longer, healthier human lifespan.

The nominations must state the name, address and qualifications of the nominee, and should include sufficient information to allow the members of the Lord Cohen Medal Committee to assess the value of the contribution to ageing research.

After the October Revolution in Russia he joined to the White Army in the Russian Civil War, where he was an assistant to the general Anton Denikin on sanitary issues.

[13] The precise date at which the "Club for Research on Ageing" was founded remains obscure but appears to predate Korenchevsky's visit to America in July 1939.

Whilst in the USA he met with Vincent Cowdrey and a group of like-minded American researchers who had just completed the multi-author textbook "Problems of Ageing: Biological and Medical Aspects".

From Fisher’s correspondence it is also clear that Korenchevsky had interested Lord Nuffield in actively supporting gerontological research by 1942[14] The first formal conference of the "British Branch of the Club for Research on Ageing" was held at Imperial College, London on 16 July 1946[15] by which time, in addition to that in the USA, branches of the club had been established in Denmark, France, Sweden and Switzerland.

This tallies closely with the chronology in Korenchevsky's BMJ article of 1952 as well as to his reference to an active executive committee for the BSRA in 1950 where it was funded by Lord Nuffield to participate in a round-table conference with the "American delegation to the First International Gerontological Congress".

These were (1) the limited number of scientists and clinicians interested in membership of "the only society engaged in research on basic problems of gerontology".

The question of how best to disseminate the scientific findings of members was complicated by both the way in which the society operated and the variety of offers it received.

In early 1952 Prof RE Tunbridge (elected a member of the BSRA executive committee in 1954) had asked the Foundation if it was willing to hold a related conference on ageing close to the time of the third Congress of the IAG (July 1954).

Ciba meetings had a distinct style in which "leading research workers from different countries and different disciplines are invited to attend the colloquia.

[20] Close linkage with Ciba was thus a sensible decision for the executive committee because it both suited the style of meeting which the small membership of the BSRA preferred and provided a route for authoritative dissemination since "the smallness of the groups [at the meeting] means the exclusion of many workers active and interested in the subjects discussed and therefore the proceedings of these conferences are published and made available throughout the world".

Although the colloquia series proper seem to have been discontinued after five years[21] from 1955 to 1970 the executive committee of the society met at the Ciba Foundation (41 Portland Place, London).

Since the foundation headquarters also provided a library and guest facilities for visiting scientists this was to prove a remarkably durable and successful arrangement.

Scientific meetings were regularly organised there and an annual Ciba lecture on ageing delivered at various locations throughout the UK until 1970 (the last probably by Leonard Hayflick).

The disengagement of Ciba from support for ageing research in the early 1970s led to a number of distinct meeting venues being used by the executive committee (including the Royal College of Pathologists, St Pancras Hospital and the Leeds General infirmary).

This was a concerted campaign to raise awareness of both the problems faced by older people and the potential of research into the mechanisms of ageing to alleviate them.

This new foundation which has such potential will require a lot of money, and it was this which prompted Sir Lindsay Ring (Lord Mayor of London till last month) to make Age Action Year his special appeal and put into it all his energy and enthusiasm.This was infectious, and the money has been coming in: first from individuals whose contributions are still required, then from companies and trusts, and recently a significant move has come from the trade union movement.

[23] There was a marked upswing in the activity and membership of the society from the mid-1990s onwards as a result of importance of research into the biology of ageing given in both the Office of Science and Technology (OST) Extend Quality Life (or EQUAL) initiative (1995) which sought to use "the combined resources, expertise and capacity for innovation of the science and engineering base to extend the active period of people's lives and in the subsequent Technology Foresight review"[24] To mark the 60th annual meeting of the BSRA, the membership voted to bestow honorary life membership on all Cohen Medallists then still living.