Robert Neil Butler
| Robert Neil Butler | |
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Robert Neil Butler in 2004
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| Born | January 21, 1927 |
| Died | July 4, 2010 (aged 83) |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Gerontology, psychiatry |
| Alma mater | Columbia University |
| Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (1976) |
Robert Neil Butler (January 21, 1927 – July 4, 2010) was a physician, gerontologist, psychiatrist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, who was the first director of the National Institute on Aging. Butler is known for his work on the social needs and the rights of the elderly and for his research on healthy aging and the dementias.
Having grown up with his grandparents in Vineland, New Jersey, Butler was shocked by the dismissive and contemptuous attitude toward the elderly and their diseases by many of his teachers at medical school, an attitude he later characterized as "ageism."
He graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University, where he was editor of the Columbia Daily Spectator and a member of the Philolexian Society.
Butler was a principal investigator of one of the first interdisciplinary, comprehensive, longitudinal studies of healthy community-residing older persons, conducted at the National Institute of Mental Health (1955-1966), which resulted in the landmark book Human Aging. His research helped establish the fact that senility was not inevitable with aging, but is a consequence of disease.
In 1969, he coined the term ageism to describe discrimination against seniors; the term was patterned on sexism and racism. Butler defined "ageism" as a combination of three connected elements. Among them were prejudicial attitudes towards older people, old age, and the aging process; discriminatory practices against older people; and institutional practices and policies that perpetuate stereotypes about elderly people.
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