The British Society for Research on Ageing (BSRA) is a scientific society (registered charity no. 1174127) 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.

Activities

Rationale

According to the earliest rules of the British Society for Research on Ageing (1954):

However, in 1956 the Annual General Meeting of the society revised the rules such that:

Since 1979 the objectives of the society have been as follows:

through research, to increase knowledge of the processes, causes and effects of ageing, and, as indicated, of means for counteracting these, both in human beings and in other organisms to publish the results of all such research to further public education therein

Thus, the Society seeks to improve understanding of the fundamental biology of ageing, as well as to educate the public regarding the scientific developments taking place in the field of modern gerontology. 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

Scientific Meetings

The society currently organises at an annual scientific meeting and contributes to the activities of other organisations with similar goals on an ad hoc basic. Sample scientific meetings include:

50th Annual Scientific Meeting (2000) Stem cells, stress and senescence 51st Annual Scientific Meeting (2001) A Meeting of Minds (joint meeting between the BSRA and Research Into Ageing) 53rd Annual Scientific Meeting (2003) Nutrition and Healthy Ageing 54th Annual Scientific Meeting (2004) Ageing Cell, Ageing Body 55th Annual Scientific Meeting (2005) Is ageing skin deep? 58th Annual Scientific Meeting (2008) Ageing: Molecules to Man 59th Annual Scientific Meeting (2009) Engineering a Healthy Future 60th Annual Scientific Meeting (2010) Systems biology of ageing 61st Annual Scientific Meeting (2011) The science of ageing: Global Progress (joint with the International Association of Biomedical Gerontology) 62nd Annual Scientific Meeting (2012) Ageing: mechanisms and mitigants 63rd Annual Scientific Meeting (2013) New directions and Targets for Research on Ageing. Influences of diet, microbiota and intestinal immunity 64th Annual Scientific Meeting (2014) Exercise, Activity and Ageing Mechanism 66th Annual Scientific Meeting (2016) Evolution and the Biology of Ageing 67th Annual Scientific Meeting (2017) The Biology of Ageing and the Omics Revolution

Scientific journal

The official journal of the society is Biogerontology and members are urged to publish here whenever possible. Good relations also exist with the Chemistry Central Journal, which accepts work specifically relevant to the chemistry of ageing. In the past the society has maintained official journal status with Mechanisms of Ageing and Development and sponsored the creation of Age and Ageing jointly with the British Geriatrics Society. It no longer retains links with these latter journals.

Election to membership

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). However, the executive committee will assess each case on its merits and appropriate experiential or professional learning may be substituted.

A candidate for membership must be proposed and seconded by two existing members, but should an application be made in the absence of such sponsors the executive committee may choose to act in their place. This is intended to ensure that no worthy applicant is rejected due to a lack of prior contact with the disciplinary community.

Life membership

Life membership is both the oldest and highest honour that the British society for research on ageing can bestow. It dates back to the very beginnings of the Society and was first awarded to its founder, Vladimir Korenchevsky (1880–1959) shortly before his death. Prior to 2011, only a four such awards had been made in the history of the BSRA, the last of these in 1966 to the pioneering gerontologist Professor Fritz Verzar (1886–1979). To qualify as an honorary life member, a nominee must be approved by at least nine-tenths of BSRA members.

The original award of honorary life membership was accompanied by a gift (the sum of one guinea per member of the executive committee). To retain this tradition honorary life members today receive a special silver badge. 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. Vichi has achieved widespread recognition for designs of this type, which draw inspiration from calligraphy and typography. The choice of a shell as the symbol of life membership combines insights from modern gerontology with the symbolism of medieval pilgrim badges. It is at once a reference to Arctica islandica (the longest-living non-colonial animal) and to the scallop shells worn by medieval pilgrims. To the original pilgrims the radial ridges on the shells they wore represented the different routes pilgrims travelled, eventually converging on their shared destination. 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.

Lord Cohen of Birkenhead medal

Established in 1979 and first awarded in 1980. The Lord Cohen Medal honours a person who in the view of the Medal Committee has made a considerable contribution to ageing research, either through original discoveries or in the promotion of the subject of gerontology in its broadest aspects. The recipient is invited to give a keynote lecture to the Society Nomination for the award can be made to the Committee by any member of the Society. 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. Current members of the executive committee are ineligible.

Korenchevsky award

The Korenchevsky Award is made to a society member who has made an original contribution to ageing research of sufficient significance for the society to sponsor wider dissemination of these findings among the scientific community. The award holder is chosen on a competitive basis from among the oral presentations made be society members at the scientific meeting (including joint meetings) of the society. The criteria for the award are the scientific significance of the work and the aptitude of delivery displayed by the candidate.

The recipient receives a cash prize (currently £1500) to be used to attend a suitable scientific meeting to present their work, promote the Objects of the Society and (in recognition of the tireless work of Korenchevsky in this arena) to facilitate international collaboration on ageing.

The current venue of choice is the Annual Meeting of the American Aging Association but the applicant may select another meeting subject to the host organisation giving proper recognition to the BSRA and prior ratification the executive committee.

History

Foundation

The British society for research on ageing began as the "Club for Research on Ageing" formed by Professor Vladimir Korenchevsky (1880–1959). Korenchevsky trained as a clinician in the Imperial Military Medical Academy at Petrograd and, after serving as head of a military laboratory during the Russo-Japanese war, undertook postgraduate work with both Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (1908) and Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1910–11). By 1915 he held the position of Professor of Experimental Pathology at the University of Petrograd. 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. After the defeat of the White Army he emigrated to Britain in 1920. He conducted research at the Lister Institute for Preventative Medicine in London from that time until 1945. Upon his retirement he founded the Nuffield Unit for Gerontological Research in Oxford where he worked until 1953. His primary research interest during his working life was the synthesis and action of sex hormones, an interest shared by several prominent members of the club for ageing in its early days.

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. It thus has a valid claim to be the oldest scientific society devoted to research into the biology of ageing in the world. It is certainly the one which achieved the most significant global results in terms of influence and dissemination.

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". On Korenchevsky’s recommendation approximately twenty of these researchers formed ‘‘the American Division’’ of the Club for Research on Ageing. The first meeting of the "American Branch" of the Club for Ageing took place in early 1940 (early club members included Ross Harrison, Robert A. Moore and Edward J. Stieglitz). Evidence both for the continuing activities of the "British branch" of the club for ageing and for its continued contact with the American division is evidenced in the extant correspondence of Walter Bradford Cannon (1871–1945) the distinguished Harvard physiologist and in that of the great British biologist Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher FRS (1890–1962) . In February 1942, Fisher was supplied by Korenchevsky with both a research proposal authored by Edward Stieglitz (probably the same document mentioned by Canon in correspondence dating from 1941) and a report on the importance of research into the biology of ageing. He collaborated with Korenchevsky during the war years and appears to have been a member of the club at that time (he attended a "guiding group" meeting on 10 September 1943 and appears to have had voting rights). From Fisher’s correspondence it is also clear that Korenchevsky had interested Lord Nuffield in actively supporting gerontological research by 1942 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 by which time, in addition to that in the USA, branches of the club had been established in Denmark, France, Sweden and Switzerland. In his address Korenchevsky told the conference:

The resolution voted by the delegates at the conference of the British Branch of the Club for Research on Ageing is also extant and remains true today: