The Lord Cohen Medal is a British medical award honouring individuals who "have made a considerable contribution to ageing research, either through original discoveries or in the promotion of the subject of gerontology in its broadest aspect". It is the highest award for services to gerontology in the United Kingdom and is named after British physician Henry Cohen.
The medal is awarded by the British Society for Research on Ageing [1] on a sporadic basis.
Birkenhead is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside, England; It was part of Cheshire until 1974. The town is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite Liverpool. At the 2011 census, it had a population of 88,818.
Leonard Hayflick was an American anatomist who was Professor of Anatomy at the UCSF School of Medicine, and was Professor of Medical Microbiology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He was also past president of the Gerontological Society of America and was a founding member of the council of the National Institute on Aging (NIA). The recipient of a number of research prizes and awards, including the 1991 Sandoz Prize for Gerontological Research, he studied the ageing process for more than fifty years. He is known for discovering that normal human cells divide for a limited number of times in vitro. This is known as the Hayflick limit. His discoveries overturned a 60-year old dogma that all cultured cells are immortal. Hayflick demonstrated that normal cells have a memory and can remember at what doubling level they have reached. He demonstrated that his normal human cell strains were free from contaminating viruses. His cell strain WI-38 soon replaced primary monkey kidney cells and became the substrate for the production of most of the world's human virus vaccines. Hayflick discovered that the etiological agent of primary atypical pneumonia was not a virus as previously believed. He was the first to cultivate the causative organism called a mycoplasma, the smallest free-living organism, which Hayflick isolated on a unique culture medium that bears his name. He named the organism Mycoplasma pneumoniae.
Henry Cohen, 1st Baron Cohen of Birkenhead was a British physician, doctor and lecturer. He was famous for his Harveian Oration at the Royal College of Physicians in 1970, on the motion of blood in the veins. Cohen was elected to the chair of medicine at the University of Liverpool in 1934. When the Central Health Services Council was formed in 1949, he became its vice-chairman, and chairman in 1957. Knighted in 1949, he was President of the British Medical Association from 1951. After a coronary thrombosis in the following year, Cohen decided to devote his life to the greater work of teaching. He was raised to the peerage as Baron Cohen of Birkenhead, of Birkenhead in the County Palatine of Chester, on 16 June 1956 and was elected President of the General Medical Council in 1961. In 1964, he became President of the Royal Society of Medicine, receiving the society's gold medal in 1971. He also opened the assembly hall of the King David School, Liverpool.
Suresh Rattan is a biogerontologist – a researcher in the field of biology of ageing, biogerontology.
Robin Holliday was a British molecular biologist. Holliday described a mechanism of DNA-strand exchange that attempted to explain gene-conversion events that occur during meiosis in fungi. That model first proposed in 1964 and is now known as the Holliday Junction.
Age and Ageing is a bimonthly peer-reviewed medical journal covering all aspects of geriatric medicine and gerontology. It was established in 1972 and is published by Oxford University Press. It is the official journal of the British Geriatrics Society and the editor-in-chief is Rowan Harwood.
Sarah Harper FRAI CBE is a British gerontologist, who established Oxford's Institute of Population Ageing, and became the University of Oxford's first Professor of Gerontology. She served on the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology between 2014 and 2017 and in 2017 was appointed Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Sarah was appointed a CBE in 2018 for services to the Science of Demography.
Professor John Guest Phillips FRS FZS was an eminent biologist. He was born in Swansea and educated at Llanelli Boys' Grammar School and the University of Liverpool; where, after gaining his BSc, he joined the research group of Chester Jones to complete a PhD in endocrinology. Following his doctorate he took up a fellowship at the Bingham Oceanographic Laboratory at Yale University with Grace E. Pickford. After a lectureship at Sheffield University Phillips was appointed to the Chair of Zoology at the University of Hong Kong. He returned to the UK to become Professor of Zoology, from 1967 to 1979, and Dean of the Faculty of Science (1978-1980) at the University of Hull, Director of the Wolfson Institute for Gerontology (1979-1986) and later Vice-Chancellor of Loughborough University from 1986 to 1987. He was secretary of the Zoological Society of London. Phillips' research was predominantly in the fields of endocrinology, notably concerning the salt glands of sea birds, and the biological basis of ageing (gerontology).
Sara Lynne Arber is a British sociologist and Professor at University of Surrey. Arber has previously held the position of President of the British Sociological Association (1999–2001) and Vice-President of the European Sociological Association (2005–2007). She is well known for her work on gender and ageing, inequalities in health and has pioneered research in the new field of sociology of sleep.
Madhu Sudan Kanungo was an Indian scientist in the field of gerontology and neuroscience as well as a teacher of molecular biology and biochemistry. He is known for his theories on how gene expression changes with age and the role of this phenomenon in ageing, which is a widely accepted as "Gene expression theory of Aging". In recognition of his contributions, he was awarded India's fourth highest civilian award, Padma Shri in 2005. He held the post of BHU Emeritus professor in zoology at the Banaras Hindu University and was also the Chancellor, Nagaland University till his death.
The British Society for Research on Ageing (BSRA) is a scientific society which promotes research to understand the causes and effects of the ageing process. The BSRA encourages publication and public understanding of ageing research and holds an annual scientific meeting. Many notable scientists with an interest in ageing are either past or current members of the organisation, which has exerted a marked influence on ageing research within the United Kingdom and internationally.
Vladimir Khatskelevich Khavinson was a Russian gerontologist and professor who was Treasurer of the European region of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics; Main gerontologist of the Health Committee of the Government of Saint Petersburg, Russia; Director of the Saint Petersburg Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology; Vice-president of Gerontological Society of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Head of the Chair of Gerontology and Geriatrics of the North-Western State Medical University, St-Petersburg; Colonel of medical service.
Alexandre Kalache is a medical epidemiologist specializing in the study of aging. Since 2012 he is President of the International Longevity Centre-Brazil and since 2015 co-President of the Global Alliance of International Longevity Centres (ILC-GA). He formerly directed the World Health Organization global ageing programme at its Geneva headquarters following an academic career largely at the Universities of London and Oxford in the United Kingdom. Kalache has researched, written and spoken in the field of ageing issues as an academic, an international civil servant and an advocate.
Arlan Richardson is the Professor of Geriatric Medicine and the Donald W. Reynolds Endowed Chair of Aging Research at OUHSC and Senior VA Career Scientist at the Oklahoma City VA Medical Center. His research interests include Calorie Restriction and Aging, Oxidative Stress, and Molecular Biology of Aging. He is the director of the Oklahoma Nathan Shock Center on Aging. He is listed in Who's Who in Gerontology and is the founder of the Barshop Institute. In 2016, Richardson told CNN that Rapamycin is the best drug he'd ever seen in slowing aging.
Alan Christopher Walker, CBE, FBA, FRSA, FAcSS is a British academic, social scientist and public health administrator. Since 1985, he has been Professor of Social Policy and Social Gerontology at the University of Sheffield.
Kaarin Anstey is an Australian Laureate Fellow and one of Australia's top dementia scientists. She is Co-Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR) at the University of New South Wales, Australia, where she is Scientia Professor of Psychology. Kaarin Anstey is an Honorary Professor at the Australian National University and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. She is a Director of the NHMRC Dementia Centre for Research Collaboration, Senior Principal Research Scientist at NeuRA and leads the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Cognitive Health and the UNSW Ageing Futures Institute.
Rose Anne Kenny is an Irish geriatrician. She is the Regius Professor of Physic and a professor of medical gerontology at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), director of the Falls and Black-out Unit at St James's Hospital in Dublin, director of the Mercer's Institute for Successful Ageing and founding principal investigator for The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA). She was admitted in 2014 to the Royal Irish Academy in recognition of academic excellence and achievement. Kenny is a fellow of Trinity College Dublin and of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of Ireland, London and Edinburgh.
Vladimir Korenchevsky was a Russian-British pathologist, gerontologist, pharmacologist, and bacteriologist.
Janet Mary Lord is a British biologist who is a Professor of Immune Cell Biology at the University of Birmingham. Her research considers immunity in old age, with a focus on the decline of neutrophil function. She was made a Commander of the British Empire in the 2023 New Year Honours List.
Lynne Cox is a British biochemist and research scientist into the molecular basis of human ageing at the University of Oxford. In 2023 she was awarded the Lord Cohen Medal.
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