--- title: Robert Butler, Guru of Growing Old description: Robert Butler, advocate of long, healthy living and father of the term ageism, dies at 83 canonical: https://time.com/archive/6597296/robert-butler-guru-of-growing-old/ author: Catherine Mayer article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2010-07-07T04:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-25T06:32:12.425Z article:section: Health og:title: Robert Butler, Guru of Growing Old og:description: Robert Butler, advocate of long, healthy living and father of the term ageism, dies at 83 og:url: https://time.com/archive/6597296/robert-butler-guru-of-growing-old/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Robert Butler, Guru of Growing Old twitter:description: Robert Butler, advocate of long, healthy living and father of the term ageism, dies at 83 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Health](/section/health/) # Robert Butler, Guru of Growing Old > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. by [Catherine Mayer](https://time.com/author/catherine-mayer/) Jul 7, 2010 4:00 AM UTC by [Catherine Mayer](https://time.com/author/catherine-mayer/) Jul 7, 2010 4:00 AM UTC Robert Butler was only 83 when he died. That might seem like a respectable age — indeed, it exceeds the average life expectancy of a white American man by 6½ years — but Butler, the prominent gerontologist, psychiatrist and founder of the U.S. International Longevity Center (ILC), a New York City–based nonprofit dedicated to promoting healthy aging, was nowhere near ready to go. He was looking forward to working “indefinitely,” he said in June, just a few weeks before his unexpected death from leukemia on July 4\. He had recently accepted a professorship at Columbia University and was planning to bring the ILC to the campus with him. “It’s kind of fun for me, because I went to Columbia College, Columbia Medical, School and now I wind up as a professor at Columbia,” he said. We were sitting in his office at the ILC, where there was a photograph, taken just a few years earlier, of the wiry Butler posing in the plank position. “It might have been more fun if I’d balanced on one arm,” he said. For a serious man who left a substantial legacy, fun featured surprisingly often in his discourse. He campaigned vigorously against ageism — and in 1968 coined the term itself, which gained wider currency when a young Carl Bernstein quoted Butler on ageism on the front page of the Washington _Post_ — but deployed a gentle wit to tackle the misconceptions and sheer ignorance fueling age prejudice. As he grew older, he became his own, and most eloquent, argument against ageism, visible proof that the elderly can be as productive, engaged, open to ideas and, yes, fun, as younger folk. “Strictly speaking, longevity is measured in numbers: it is the arithmetical accumulation of days, weeks, months and years that produces our chronological life,” he wrote in his latest book, _The Longevity Prescription_ , published only last month. “Yet aging — or, more accurately, its converse, staying young — is in no small measure a state of mind that defies measurement.” Butler attributed his own apparent healthy aging at least in part to his optimistic outlook. [ (See a story on amortality — resisting the onset of age.) ](https://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1884779%5F1884782%5F1884758,00.html) His output was prodigious. He was the first director of the National Institute on Aging, establishing Alzheimer’s disease as a national research priority, and founded America’s first department of geriatrics, at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. His books included the Pulitzer Prize–winning _Why Survive? Being Old in America_ and, with his second wife Myrna I. Lewis, _The New Love and Sex After 60_ . Lewis died in 2000, and Butler, though still mourning her, delightedly revealed in June that he had found love again “with a very special person.” [ (See TIME’s photo-essay “Does Age Bring Wisdom?”) ](https://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1848104,00.html) Butler believed that by eating well, exercising and staying connected, we might extend our already increased longevity — on average we have gained about 30 years since the beginning of the 20th century — and, more important, should be able to look forward to enjoying good health for a larger proportion of our life spans. In that respect, at least, he proved a role model right until the end, as he was energetic and effective almost until the moment he died. He was unimpressed by the cult of youth. “Bob Hope said there are the three stages of life: youth, middle age and ‘Now you look good,’ ” Butler told me. “I think that with all the plastic surgery and everything, the real truth is our appearance is not the essential element in our lives. And I think as people realize all these different presumed treatments are not really going to do the job, we may grow up.” Did he still have unfulfilled ambitions or dreams beyond his new post at Columbia? “Well, I don’t think I’m going to go anywhere else,” he said. “But I might.” [ See how to prevent illness at any age. ](https://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1903873%5F1903802,00.html) [ See the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2009\. ](https://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379%5F1944376,00.html) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6597296/robert-butler-guru-of-growing-old/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6597296/robert-butler-guru-of-growing-old/"},"headline":"Robert Butler, Guru of Growing Old","datePublished":"2010-07-07T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-25T06:32:12.425Z","description":"Robert Butler, advocate of long, healthy living and father of the term ageism, dies at 83","url":"https://time.com/archive/6597296/robert-butler-guru-of-growing-old/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Catherine Mayer","url":"https://time.com/author/catherine-mayer/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6597296/robert-butler-guru-of-growing-old/","name":"Robert Butler, Guru of Growing Old"}}]}] ```