National Institute on Aging, US National Institutes of Health
Obituary
Richard Michael Suzman Sociologist and demographer of ageing. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Aug 9, 1942, he died from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in Bethesda, MD, USA, on April 16, 2015, aged 72 years. Around the world, population ageing is changing the planet. So said Richard Suzman, Director of the Division of Behavioral and Social Research at the US National Institute on Aging (NIA). Speaking in an interview 2 years ago, he offered a thought-provoking comparison: “In some ways it’s a little like climate change. You don’t notice it day to day, but it’s happening and it’s very powerful. It’s going to have a significant effect on world economy, rearranging productivity, trade, migration, and other activities.” Suzman devoted much of his career to collecting data on ageing: data indispensable to the policy makers faced with this major demographic transition. Somnath Chatterji, Team Leader for Multi-Country Studies in the Department of Health Statistics and Informatics at WHO in Geneva, says Suzman had a broad vision. “His interests covered the entire spectrum [of old age] from biology to understanding how people lived their lives and the impact of economics.” David Wise, Professor of Political Economy at the Harvard Kennedy School, knew Suzman for 25 years. “He was very smart, extremely energetic, and different from every other civil servant I’ve ever known”, he says. When it came to grant applications Suzman took a close interest in the issues to be researched. Suzman joined NIA in 1983 as Director of the Office of the Demography of Aging, served later as Chief of Demography and Population Epidemiology, and assumed his role as divisional Director in 1998. The work with which he is most associated, and for which he was the driving force, 1942
is the US Health and Retirement Study. “Richard had an extraordinary and unusual combination of vision, intellect, and perseverance”, says NIA Director Richard Hodes. “He was able to see the research needs that would best serve an ageing population.” He grasped the benefits of having a large longitudinal population study that could be used to track many parameters of health, wellbeing, and also, as they became available, biological measures such as genetic data. Nor were Suzman’s interests confined to the USA, says Chatterji. “Over the past 10 years he was responsible for getting old age on to the international public health agenda.” At a time when WHO’s concerns with health in low-income and middle-income countries were still dominated by infectious diseases and maternal and child health, Suzman helped to persuade WHO to pay more attention to older people. “Richard’s ability to get people to produce internationally harmonisable data sets allowed you to do comparative research across nations”, adds John Haaga, Deputy Director at NIA’s Division of Behavioral and Social Research. “A lot of interesting things have come of it, much with shock value for Americans when we’ve found that older people in western Europe and Japan are healthier.” Suzman’s work helped to create a new science of biodemography that brought biology together with demographic studies. Suzman went to the University of Witwatersrand in 1960. As a nephew of Helen Suzman—for many years the only South African Member of Parliament explicitly opposed to apartheid—he supported the anti-apartheid movement and ultimately decided to leave South Africa. He won a scholarship to Harvard, then moved to the UK to do a diploma in social anthropology at Oxford University. Returning to Harvard, he completed a PhD in social anthropology in 1973. 2 years at Stanford University were followed by a move to the University of California, San Francisco where, among other topics, he studied the effect of economic cycles on older people. It was from here that he joined NIA. “I don’t think Richard knew what it meant when you said an idea was on the back burner”, says Haaga. “He always had 12 or 13 ideas that all needed attention now. He had high standards and would get frustrated quickly, but he was very self-aware so knew when a demand was unreasonable. A lot of people round the world enjoyed working with him.” Chatterji agrees: “He was not scared to speak his mind, no matter what sort of gathering he was in. He was very frank about this thoughts. But he was also sensitive to people’s needs and feelings, even though he might come across as irascible.” Hodes puts it like this: “If I’d been looking for someone to head the division to make life easy for all of us it would not have been Richard. But looking for someone who would make life the richest, most challenging, and most successful, Richard was the best choice.” Suzman is survived by his wife, Janice Krupnick, son, Daniel, and daughter, Jessica.
Geoff Watts www.thelancet.com Vol 385 May 16, 2015
Obituary
Richard Michael Suzman Sociologist and demographer of ageing. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Aug 9, 1942, he died from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in Bethesda, MD, USA, on April 16, 2015, aged 72 years. Around the world, population ageing is changing the planet. So said Richard Suzman, Director of the Division of Behavioral and Social Research at the US National Institute on Aging (NIA). Speaking in an interview 2 years ago, he offered a thought-provoking comparison: “In some ways it’s a little like climate change. You don’t notice it day to day, but it’s happening and it’s very powerful. It’s going to have a significant effect on world economy, rearranging productivity, trade, migration, and other activities.” Suzman devoted much of his career to collecting data on ageing: data indispensable to the policy makers faced with this major demographic transition. Somnath Chatterji, Team Leader for Multi-Country Studies in the Department of Health Statistics and Informatics at WHO in Geneva, says Suzman had a broad vision. “His interests covered the entire spectrum [of old age] from biology to understanding how people lived their lives and the impact of economics.” David Wise, Professor of Political Economy at the Harvard Kennedy School, knew Suzman for 25 years. “He was very smart, extremely energetic, and different from every other civil servant I’ve ever known”, he says. When it came to grant applications Suzman took a close interest in the issues to be researched. Suzman joined NIA in 1983 as Director of the Office of the Demography of Aging, served later as Chief of Demography and Population Epidemiology, and assumed his role as divisional Director in 1998. The work with which he is most associated, and for which he was the driving force, 1942
is the US Health and Retirement Study. “Richard had an extraordinary and unusual combination of vision, intellect, and perseverance”, says NIA Director Richard Hodes. “He was able to see the research needs that would best serve an ageing population.” He grasped the benefits of having a large longitudinal population study that could be used to track many parameters of health, wellbeing, and also, as they became available, biological measures such as genetic data. Nor were Suzman’s interests confined to the USA, says Chatterji. “Over the past 10 years he was responsible for getting old age on to the international public health agenda.” At a time when WHO’s concerns with health in low-income and middle-income countries were still dominated by infectious diseases and maternal and child health, Suzman helped to persuade WHO to pay more attention to older people. “Richard’s ability to get people to produce internationally harmonisable data sets allowed you to do comparative research across nations”, adds John Haaga, Deputy Director at NIA’s Division of Behavioral and Social Research. “A lot of interesting things have come of it, much with shock value for Americans when we’ve found that older people in western Europe and Japan are healthier.” Suzman’s work helped to create a new science of biodemography that brought biology together with demographic studies. Suzman went to the University of Witwatersrand in 1960. As a nephew of Helen Suzman—for many years the only South African Member of Parliament explicitly opposed to apartheid—he supported the anti-apartheid movement and ultimately decided to leave South Africa. He won a scholarship to Harvard, then moved to the UK to do a diploma in social anthropology at Oxford University. Returning to Harvard, he completed a PhD in social anthropology in 1973. 2 years at Stanford University were followed by a move to the University of California, San Francisco where, among other topics, he studied the effect of economic cycles on older people. It was from here that he joined NIA. “I don’t think Richard knew what it meant when you said an idea was on the back burner”, says Haaga. “He always had 12 or 13 ideas that all needed attention now. He had high standards and would get frustrated quickly, but he was very self-aware so knew when a demand was unreasonable. A lot of people round the world enjoyed working with him.” Chatterji agrees: “He was not scared to speak his mind, no matter what sort of gathering he was in. He was very frank about this thoughts. But he was also sensitive to people’s needs and feelings, even though he might come across as irascible.” Hodes puts it like this: “If I’d been looking for someone to head the division to make life easy for all of us it would not have been Richard. But looking for someone who would make life the richest, most challenging, and most successful, Richard was the best choice.” Suzman is survived by his wife, Janice Krupnick, son, Daniel, and daughter, Jessica.
Geoff Watts www.thelancet.com Vol 385 May 16, 2015
