S. Jay Olshansky

Stuart Jay Olshansky (born 22 February 1954) is a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, concentrating on biodemography and gerontology.

He is also a research associate at the Center on Aging (University of Chicago) and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Olshansky is an associate editor of the Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences and Biogerontology and is a member of the editorial boards of several other scientific journals. Olshansky has been working with colleagues in the biological sciences to develop the modern "biodemographic paradigm" of mortality – an effort to understand the biological nature of the survival and dying out processes of living organisms. The focus of his research has been on estimates of the upper limits to human longevity, exploring the health and public policy implications associated with individual and population aging, forecasts of the size, survival, and age structure of the population, pursuit of the scientific means to slow aging in people (The Longevity Dividend), and global implications of the re-emergence of infectious and parasitic diseases, and insurance linked securities.

Biography
Olshansky was born on February 22, 1954. He attended Michigan State University and was awarded a B.S. in 1975. He then attended the University of Chicago and was awarded an M.So. in 1982. He received his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1984.

His work on biodemography has been funded by a Special Emphasis Research Career Award and an Independent Scientist Award from the National Institute on Aging and a research grant from the U.S. Social Security Administration starting in 1991.

In 2011 he published an article on the longevity of United States presidents in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Olshansky was the recipient of a 2005/2006 Senior Fulbright Award to lecture in France. In 2010 he was made fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.

He is co-author with Bruce A. Carnes of The Quest for Immortality: Science at the Frontiers of Aging (Norton, 2001); According to WorldCat, the book is held in 721 libraries.