Perls to Receive GSA’s 2016 Joseph T. Freeman Award

Professor in the section of Geriatrics Thomas T. Perls, MD, MPH, FACP has received the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) 2016 Joseph T. Freeman Award.  GSA is the nation’s largest interdisciplinary organization devoted to the field of aging.

The award presentation will take place at GSA’s 2016 Annual Scientific Meeting, which will be held Nov. 16-20 in New Orleans. This conference is organized to foster interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers, educators, and practitioners who specialize in the study of the aging process.

The Joseph T. Freeman Award is an annual honor and was established in 1977 through a bequest from a patient’s estate as a tribute to a leading physician and one of the Society’s distinguished members and past presidents.  The recipient traditionally presents a lecture at the next Annual Scientific Meeting; in 2017, the lecture will take place in July at the GSA-hosted World Congress of Gerontology and Geriatrics in San Francisco.

Perls received his geriatrics training at both Mount Royal Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, and Harvard Medical School, and obtained his master’s degree in public health at Harvard. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians. In 1995, he began and continues to direct the longest running and largest study of centenarians, their siblings and offspring in the world, the New England Centenarian Study. Additionally, he is the principal investigator of the Boston study center of the National Institute on Aging-funded multi-center Long Life Family Study, a longitudinal study, established in 2006