Having grown up with his grandparents in Vineland, New Jersey, Butler was shocked by the dismissive and contemptuous attitude toward the elderly and their diseases by many of his teachers at medical school, an attitude he later characterized as "ageism". He graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University, where he was editor of the Columbia Daily Spectator and a member of the Philolexian Society.
Career
Butler was a principal investigator of one of the first interdisciplinary, comprehensive, longitudinal studies of healthy community-residing older persons, conducted at the National Institute of Mental Health, which resulted in the landmark book Human Aging. His research helped establish the fact that senility was not inevitable with aging, but is a consequence of disease. In 1969, he coined the term ageism to describe discrimination against seniors; the term was patterned on sexism and racism. Butler defined "ageism" as a combination of three connected elements. Among them were prejudicial attitudes towards older people, old age, and the aging process; discriminatory practices against older people; and institutional practices and policies that perpetuate stereotypes about elderly people. In 1975, he became the founding Director of the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health, where he remained until 1982. At the National Institute on Aging he established Alzheimer's disease as a national research priority. In 1982, he founded the Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, the first department of geriatrics in a United Statesmedical school. In addition, Butler helped found the Alzheimer's Disease Association, the American Association of Geriatric Psychiatry, the American Federation for Aging Research and the Alliance for Aging Research. Butler was the founder, Chief Executive Officer, and President of the International Longevity Center-USA, a non-profit international organization created to educate people on how to live longer and better. The International Longevity Center-USA is now housed at the , a university-wide center of Columbia University based at the Mailman School of Public Health
Publications
Butler is best known for his 1975 book Why Survive? Being Old In America, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1976. A 2003 paperback edition is currently available.
Recent books
Aging and Mental Health: Positive Psychosocial and Biomedical Approaches
Butler is featured in the 2009 documentary film, I Remember Better When I Paint, which examines the positive impact of art on people with Alzheimer's disease and how these approaches can change the way the disease is viewed by society.
