James E. Birren (1918-2016)

James E. Birren, Ph.D. (Apr. 4, 1918 - Jan. 15, 2016) James Birren was a legend in the field of Gerontology. He received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University and began his research career at the Naval Medical Research Center. In 1947 he joined the U.S. Public Health Service in Baltimore and did research on aging at the Gerontology unit. Jim attended the very first meeting of the Gerontological Society of America in 1948 at the Hotel Commodore in  New York. As he quips, "The hotel where the first GSA meeting was held has been torn down, but I'm still here." In 1950 he joined the National Institute of Mental Health and created the first section on aging. In 1964 he became the Director for the Program on Aging for the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development. Jim moved to the University of Southern California in 1965 where he remained until 1989. There he was the founding director of the Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center. In 1989 Jim moved to UCLA where he remained as the associate Director of the UCLA Center on Aging until he retired in 2003. Jim's early research had an experimental base and he studied cognitive change and aging. Since developing the course, Guided Autobiography, more than thirty years ago, he has devoted much of his time and energy in the area of autobiographical studies. Jim Birren's accomplishments and awards are far too numerous to mention. Most recently (2004) he was honored by the National Council on Aging and he received the Ollie Randall award. The American Society on Aging (ASA) inducted him into the Hall of Fame in 2004. In addition to more than 250 publications in academic journals and books, Jim is Series Editor for the internationally recognized handbooks on aging i.e. The Handbook on the Psychology of Aging. The handbooks are currently being prepared for the sixth edition. He has written two books specifically on Guided Autobiography: Guiding Autobiography Groups for Older Adults with D. Deutchman (1991) and Telling the Stories of Life Through Guided Autobiography with K. Cochran (2001). Jim continued to teach the Guided Autobiography method and to facilitate groups. He was Senior Distinguished Research Faculty at California Sate University Fullerton. He lived in Pacific Palisades and frequently gave presentations on Guided Autobiography in the Southern California area. He was working with ASA and the MindAlert program to bring Guided Autobiography to locations as diverse as Kelowna, British Columbia and Atlanta, Georgia. Jim has organized a devoted group of colleagues who comprise a work group whose purpose is to spread the Guided Autobiography program.

He passed away at age 97, on January 15, 2016.

http://guidedautobiography.com/aboutus/index.html#jamesbirren http://news.usc.edu/90915/in-memoriam-james-e-birren-97/