While it seems natural today to think of the “golden years” as a time of intense human (and even spiritual) development, not long ago most experts thought of aging as a disease-like state.  Many people have driven a change in public perceptions to create our current view of “positive” aging.  Perhaps few have had more influence than Gene Cohen, MD PhD, who did breakthrough research and published seminal work in the developmental stages of the mature mind.   Gene passed away on Saturday, and you can read a really heart-warming summary of his amazing life that appeared in The Washington Post today by clicking here.

Even if you are no fan of obits, you’ll want to read one that includes the line:

“Since I hold the patent on WW III,” he wrote on his curriculum vitae, “it is now illegal for any person or country to declare WW III.”

But more on that in a minute…I could recount his many achievements, as I did once in introducing him, but I know the one-liner Gene would use to one-up my efforts. “Gee,” he said after that introduction, “I really wish my mother had been here to hear that.”

While a “mighty oak” of the positive aging movement, Gene planted many, many acorns.  I know that because I was lucky enough to have had Gene as a mentor and a friend, and am one of his acorns.

When I attended Shiva at his house Monday night (I arrived in DC too late to make it to the funeral), I told Gene’s family that he was the “favorite college professor I never actually had.” I spent many an hour learning at his knee (somewhat literally the year he had two debilitating hip surgeries and hosted my visits while reclining on a bed in his kitchen). At aging and cognition conferences, I was often lucky to get Gene to myself for a 5-hour personal seminar over dinner in the corner of some restaurant with a good bottle or two of wine.  Sometimes, there was only time for a quick lunch in the café at GWU, where in recent years he ran the Center on Aging, Health & Humanities, or a short but educational phone call.

Despite all those hours of personal tutoring about the immense power of the mature mind and its capacity to do amazing things, my greatest learning from Gene came from his books, which are thankfully available to everyone.  You’ll also get a bit of his charm sprinkled through the pages, though not in the doses with which it was doled out when his gleeful insights were served up with a good bottle of wine.

Here is a quick summary of those books (which anyone interested in the brain should have on their bookshelf) from our Brain Fitness Newsletter published today.

The Creative Age: Awakening Human Potential in the Second Half of Life (2001) Gene D. Cohen, MD, PhD

The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain (2005) Gene D. Cohen, MD, PhD

We often hear of how the brain declines with age. But in The Creative Age and The Mature Mind, Dr. Gene Cohen brings to light the positive changes age brings to the brain. In The Creative Age, Dr. Cohen explores how creativity blossoms as the brain changes in later life, whether the creativity is expressed in a private (“little c”) or more public (“big C”) setting. Marginalia throughout the book traces creative accomplishments of people in later life. In The Mature Mind, Dr. Cohen expands on the four developmental seasons of life postulated by his mentor Erik Erikson. Dr. Cohen explores the developmental phases of the mature mind after midlife: re-evaluation, liberation, summing-up and encore. He calls on ground-breaking studies to show that later life is far from a cold stark winter, as the mind draws on knowledge and observation, liberated from conventions and pushed by life experience.

I was lucky enough to get introduced to Gene by Horace Deets, a member of the Posit Science Board (who for many years ran AARP and, in retirement, has been busy on many boards including HelpAge International and Longevity Alliance).  Before Horace and I ever met, I contacted him through a friend to seek a meeting and to explain how Dr. Mike Merzenich and I were going to form a company to change the way the brain ages, Horace turned to his friend Gene to see if he should take our meeting. Gene did not know us, but knew Dr. Mike’s work and vouched for us.  So even before we were friends, Gene sent me Horace.

After Horace agreed to help us and joined our board he suggested that I meet Gene.  He thought we would hit it off because we saw the potential of the mature mind in the same way…But Horace also knew that Gene loved games.  Gene invented games and sold them through a little company he ran as a part-time diversion.  His games were all award winners for ingenuity and design.  That’s how Gene came to patent World War III.  He invented an architecturally beautiful game called WWIII that is a cross between scrabble and chess and got a patent for it.  And, it was in his capacity as patent holder that he impishly declares on all our behalf that it is illegal for anyone to start WWIII.

Because of his work in aging and cognition (which had started in the Public Health Service and expanded prodigiously through his many years at the National Institutes of Health, as he published books, hundreds of articles and started organizations like the Gerontological Society of America on his journey – I was determined to work some of his achievement in even if his mother did not hear it) and because of his love of games, Gene had no choice but to be a big fan of Posit Science.  Even in our first meeting, unassisted by wine, we sat and talked quite unexpectedly for hours.  I’ll miss hearing his voice in those conversations, but I am glad that he implanted enough content for me to continue a dialogue with my inner Gene.

Miss ya….

Possibly Related posts:

1. A New Age of Centenarians
2. The Surprising Talents of the Middle Aged Mind
3. Technology – Brain’s Friend or Foe?
4. Unconstrain Your Brain