History of the GRG

The Gerontology Research Group was founded in April 1990 (though the charter wasn't finished until October) by Dr. L. Stephen Coles and Dr. Stephen M. Kaye at UCLA. In May 1995, the  GRG expanded to include an online prescence, which has since a major outlet for expansion and growth. In 1998, the GRG began tracking supercentenarians. In 2000, the Gerontology Research Group became the major consultant for Guinness World Records in the category of "world's oldest people". In May 2002, responsibility for the GRG supercentenarian data was shifted from Louis Epstein to Robert Young. At this time, the GRG Database on Supercentenarians began. The GRG grew rapidly in the 2000s, with the number of cases reaching the 1,000 case mark in 2006. Today, the GRG database on supercentenarians comprises over 2,000 cases, and is the world's largest supercentenarian database (with the International Database on Longevity having achieved the 1,000 case mark in 2015).