University of Pittsburgh Press
Old Age, New Science
Paperback $40.00

Request Exam or Desk Copy. Request Review Copy

Old Age, New Science

Gerontologists and Their Biosocial Visions, 1900–1960

By Hyung Wook Park
Park's splendid accomplishment appears propitiously. Park extends to newcomers and veterans in gerontology illuminating lessons. Mining the past for precedents that might inform present thinking entails more than prefatory throat-clearing. Park shows a second generation of gero-historians how to offer possibilities for rediscovering patterns and mechanisms through concerted searches for a usable past.
The Gerontologist
Paperback $40.00

Request Exam or Desk Copy. Request Review Copy

Old Age, New Science explores how a group of American and British life scientists contributed to gerontology’s development as a multidisciplinary field. It examines the foundational “biosocial visions” they shared, a byproduct of both their research and the social problems they encountered. Hyung Wook Park reveals how these visions shaped popular discourses on aging, directly influenced the institutionalization of gerontology, and reflected the class, gender, and race biases of their founders.
Old Age, New Science explores how a group of American and British life scientists contributed to gerontology’s development as a multidisciplinary field. It examines the foundational “biosocial visions” they shared, a byproduct of both their research and the social problems they encountered. Hyung Wook Park shows how these visions shaped popular discourses on aging, directly influenced the institutionalization of gerontology, and also reflected the class, gender, and race biases of their founders.

More Praise

Fills an important gap in the historical literature...Park has done important work in an impressive array of archival holdings as well as scientific publications.

Journal of History of Medicine and Allied Science

This meticulously researched, well-written study of gerontology's developmental years in the United States and the United Kingdom is a detailed, masterful account of a topic whose origins will not have to be revisited for many years.

Choice

Through extensive archival research, Hyung Wook Park has unearthed a wealth of fascinating detail about the work of the pioneering life scientists who established gerontology as a multidisciplinary scientific field. His book will likely stand for some time as the definitive historical account of gerontology.

Jesse Ballenger, author of Self, Senility, and Alzheimer's Disease in Modern America: A History

An extremely valuable contribution to the studies of knowledge of aging, adding crucial insights into how the problem was framed as a multidisciplinary scientific research field.

Medical History
Table of Contents
Sample

352 Pages, 6 x 9 in.

September, 2026

isbn : 9780822968856

Subjects

about the author

Hyung Wook Park

Hyung Wook Park is assistant professor of history at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

learn more
Hyung Wook Park