[Commemoration. In honour of György Huszár (1911-2002) and Béla Berényi (1911-2005) -- on the centenary of their births]

100 years ago two outstanding teachers of the Faculty of Dentistry of the Semmelweis University (Budapest) were born. Dr. Huszár was a prosthodontist, an expert on metal and other dental materials, as well as a geroprosthodontist and medical historian. Professor Berényi was internationally recognized as an expert on salivary gland surgery and also orthognatic surgery. Both of them published several textbooks and many hundreds of scientific papers in Hungarian and in foreign languages. They were internationally recognized scientists, members of several national and international societies, as well as editors of national and international dental journals.

Dr Marjory Warren CBE MRCS LRCP (1897-1960): the mother of British geriatric medicine

Dr Marjory Warren was a remarkable, formidable physician who reversed the neglect of chronic sick patients and brought their treatment into the modern era. She advocated the creation of the specialty of geriatric medicine with units based in district general hospitals, and that medical students and nurses should be taught about the diseases of old age. She treated the whole patient, applied advances in medicine and therapeutics, devised new techniques and equipment to assist disabled elderly stroke and amputee patients, and made great improvements in the ward environment. She emphasized the importance of the patient's social background, and electrified both staff and patients with her drive and enthusiasm. Many patients were treated successfully and discharged. Bed requirements were reduced and vacated wards allocated for other uses. She wrote extensively and lectured across the world to national and international approbation.

"Senility and death of tissues are not a necessary phenomenon": Alexis Carrel and the origins of gerontology

The French surgeon and Nobel laureate Alexis Carrel's tissue culture has been highly influential in biomedicine. This paper contextualizes Carrel's works with respect to the birth of gerontology during the first half of the twentieth century. I argue that Carrel contributed to gerontology in several respects. First, using his "immortal" tissues, he asserted that aging was a contingent phenomenon that could be experimentally manipulated. Although this claim was eventually challenged, it prompted many scientists to think that aging was not so much an unavoidable, unidirectional phenomenon as a process amenable to experimental approaches. Second, his research on different culture conditions required by distinct cell types encouraged the idea that the rate and mode of aging differed in distinct parts of the body. This idea became a basis of later gerontologists' claim that each senior person's job in industry should be determined according to the degree of senescence shown in his particular body parts. It also helped gerontologists make their field a multidisciplinary arena that could tackle diverse features of senescence occurring in the body. Third, Carrel's public speeches and appearance in popular media encouraged both scientists and laypeople to think that research on senescence should be pursued more systematically in an era of an increasing elderly population. By analyzing the relation of these issues to the efforts to construct gerontology, this paper illustrates tissue culture's broader meanings with respect to the emerging concerns about the aging population, the need for continued employment of seniors, and scientists' hopes for controlling senile processes.

[Gerontology crisis: to a question about primary health in the XXth century]

Last decades the phenomenon of ageing population at the expense of reduction of birth rate and continuous growth of life expectancy is observed and moreover the life expectancy increase has almost linear character. In our opinion, this growth will stop the next years and there will be a considerable reduction of life expectancy. Roughly it should occur after 2010 year when the persons born in second half of the XXth century, i.e. after 1950 year, will start to enter advanced age. The reason of this drama consist in our opinion in catastrophic deterioration of primary health at persons born in second half of XXth century owing to action of "stop-evolution" factors and inhabitancy crisis. "Primary health" as definition in this text means combination of congenital predisposition to diseases (pathogenicity) with congenital possibility to autorecovery (sanogenicity). So the quality of primary health depends on features of the person genome and features of the person antenatal period of life including the delivery. Among factors of "stop-evolution" breaking natural selection consequently of sharp decrease in number of birth and fertility in population and as consequence worsening quality of congenital sanogenicity we consider first of all social factors. Among factors operating due to crisis of an inhabitancy and as consequence increase of congenital pathogenicity we consider anthropogenic factors (success of medicine, changes of food, technogenic factors). The analysis of own data of diabetic patients born during various periods of the XXth century (before 1908, in 1909-1923, 1924-1938, 1939-1953 yrs) has demonstrated the essential reduction of number of long-livers in a family (30,7; 35,0; 25,4; 27,8% accordingly), and on the other hand the sharp increase in frequency of cases of a family diabetes during the century (20,0; 5,9; 36,8; 64,7% accordingly). Thus, the action of some factors described by us has been already shown in first half of XXth century. To overcome the given "gerontology crisis" apparently, the interdisciplinary approach including joint researches with the subsequent development of recommendations, with participation not only gerontologists/geriatrists, but also pediatrists, andrologists/gynecologists, endocrinologists, genetics, ecologists and sociologists is necessary.

[From Carrel to Hayflick and back or what we got from the 100 years of cytogerontological studies]

The history of experimental-gerontological studies on cultured cells is reviewed. Comparative analysis of cytogerontological investigations and/or gerontological theories of Weismann, Carrel, Hayflick, and the paper author is carried out. It is emphasized that in XX century the theories' nature has changed abruptly many times. It is concluded that at the moment it is almost impossible to explain with the help of the cytogerontological studies' results how multicellular organisms age. The necessity of obligatory combination of experiments on cultured cells with fundamental gerontological investigations, including survival curve analysis for humans or experimental animals is supposed.

[The history of ageing in modern times according to current German research]

Historical research into ageing has gained importance since the end of the last century. While in the past ageing used to be mostly the object of historical demographics and historical family research, a number of branches within historical science are now interested in the topic. So far, research has focused on various pension systems, on demographic changes and old age poverty. Other points of interest are the care within or outside of the family and the resulting life conditions, for example in the "sick houses" (Siechenhäuser). The construction of age-related images also plays an important part. Medical discourses on the various concepts of age also represent a wide field of historical research.

Longevity, aging, and caloric restriction: Clive Maine McCay and the construction of a multidisciplinary research program

Since the 1930s scientists from fields such as biochemistry, pathology, immunology, genetics, neuroscience, and nutrition have studied the relation of dietary caloric intake to longevity and aging. This paper discusses how Clive Maine McCay, a professor of animal husbandry at Cornell University, began his investigation of the topic and promoted it as a productive research program in the multidisciplinary science of gerontology. Initially, McCay observed the effect of reduced-calorie diets on life span and senescence while pursuing his nutrition research in the context of animal husbandry and agriculture. But when he received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and started to participate in the establishment of gerontology during the 1930s, the scope of his research was considerably expanded beyond his original disciplinary domain. It became a multidisciplinary research program that attracted scholars from a variety of scientific and medical disciplines. This paper argues that through this expansion McCay's research created a means of maintaining cooperation among the diverse and heterogeneous academic fields constituting gerontology.

Professor Arthur Norman Exton-Smith CBE MA MD FRCP (1920-90): distinguished geriatrician and gerontologist

Professor Norman Exton-Smith was a highly respected, distinguished postwar consultant geriatrician with a worldwide reputation. He devoted his life to improving the medical care of elderly people and researching age-related decline in physical function, particularly thermoregulation and postural balance. He established thriving clinical and research departments at St Pancras Hospital, London. Many of his junior medical staff became well-known geriatricians. He published and lectured extensively, organized many meetings and conferences, and was advisor to the Department of Health and Social Security for many years. He was a valued authority on geriatric medicine within the Royal College of Physicians of London and a major influence in the British Geriatrics Society (BGS) of which he was Secretary and later the President.

[The 15th anniversary of the Gerontological Society of The Russian Academy of Sciences]

The article highlights main activities and results as well as major trends of developments and undertakings of the Gerontological Society of the Russian Academy of Sciences founded in March 1994.