Tom Kirkwood

Thomas Burton Loram Kirkwood CBE FMedSci (6 July 1951, Durban, South Africa) is an English biologist who made his major contribution to the biology of ageing by proposing the disposable soma theory of aging. He is Emeritus Professor in Ageing in Newcastle University, where he previously headed the Institute for Ageing and Health and was Associate Dean for Ageing. He is the author of Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Aging (1999), The End of Age: Why Everything About Aging Is Changing (2001), and co-author of Chance, Development, and Aging (2000, together with Caleb E. Finch). In 2001 he gave the annual Reith Lectures.

Kirkwood was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.

Education and early life

When he was aged four, Tom Kirkwood’s family moved from South Africa to Oxford, England. His parents were active in opposition to apartheid, and his father was appointed inaugural Professor in Race Relations at the University of Oxford. Educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, to which he won a scholarship, Tom Kirkwood gained his Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge in 1972, followed by a Master’s degree in Applied Statistics from the Department of Biomathematics at the University of Oxford in 1973. In 1983, he gained his PhD in Biology from the University of Cambridge, based on part-time research on ageing, for which he was advised by Robin Holliday and others, including John Maynard Smith.

Career and research

Tom Kirkwood joined the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC), London, as a biostatistician in 1973. His research primarily concerned the measurement of biological molecules involved in blood clotting and clot dispersal. Of particular significance was his role in inventing and validating the International Normalized Ratio (INR)1 as a tool for monitoring the degree of anticoagulation achieved using drugs such as warfarin. It was while working at the NIBSC that Kirkwood began his lifetime interest in ageing. Close connections between the NIBSC and the [[National Institute for Medical Research}} (NIMR) brought him into contact with Robin Holliday of the NIMR, who was investigating the phenomenon of cellular ageing known as the Hayflick Limit. This led in 1975 to publications proposing the ‘commitment theory’ of cellular senescence2,3 and exploring the potential for ageing to be caused by instability in the cellular machinery for building proteins4. In 1977, Kirkwood drew upon these ideas to propose the disposable soma theory, a physiologically based evolutionary hypothesis to explain why and how ageing occurs5,6.

In 1981, Kirkwood joined the NIMR as a tenured scientist to continue research on ageing and address other theoretical topics, including population dynamics of viruses, bacterial growth and early applications of biostatistics in the emerging field of bioinformatics.

A transition to a full-time focus on ageing occurred when, in 1993, Kirkwood moved to the University of Manchester, to be Professor of Biological Gerontology. In addition to continuing with questions about evolution of ageing, Kirkwood undertook research on ageing of stem cells7 and on cellular resistance to stress8, and he established the multidisciplinary Centre for Integrative Ageing Research. Growing interactions with Newcastle University led to the formation of a Joint Centre on Ageing between the two universities, and in 1999 Kirkwood moved to Newcastle as Professor of Medicine, where he became Director of the Institute for Ageing and Health from 2004 and Associate Dean for Ageing from 2011. Following retirement from Newcastle University in 2015, he became Emeritus Professor. He also became part-time Professor of Biogerontology at the University of Copenhagen, where is now Associate Professor.

In addition to his contribution to understanding evolution of ageing, including why menopause occurs9 and why calorie restriction extends lifespan10, Kirkwood used his interdisciplinary training both to address the complexity of ageing through systems biology11 and also to examine the factors influencing personal trajectories of health into old age12. Of particular significance has been Kirkwood’s emphasis on ‘network’ theories13, notably with Axel Kowald, in recognition of the fact that the disposable soma theory makes clear that multiple, interacting mechanisms are likely to contribute to ageing14. With support from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), in 2005 he initiated and led the Centre for Integrated Systems Biology of Ageing and Nutrition, and in 2006 he launched the Medical Research Council funded Newcastle 85+ Study, a uniquely detailed investigation of the biological, medical and social factors impacting on the oldest old.

Science communication

As an early spokesperson for research on ageing, Kirkwood has engaged in frequent broadcasting on television and radio in a wide range of news and documentary programmes and has been interviewed many times for a diverse range of newspapers and magazines. His book Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Ageing received exceptionally broad and uniformly favourable review coverage around the world, including in mainstream newspapers and scientific journals, and won the Casa de las Ciencias 2001 prize in Spain for best popular science book. Kirkwood’s BBC Reith Lectures15 have won wide acclaim. In 2014, he was invited by the Nobel Foundation to speak in a Nobel Week Dialogue on ageing in Stockholm on the eve of the awarding of the Nobel Prizes. In 2017 and 2019, he was invited to speak again in Nobel Prize Dialogues on Ageing in Seoul, Tokyo and Madrid.

Public roles

Kirkwood has served as council member of the Academy of Medical Sciences, [[BBSRC], and the Science and Industry Council for the north of England. He is President of the Scientific Board of the AXA Research Fund16, which supports research in leading academic institutions around the world in areas related to risk. He has chaired the British Society for Research on Ageing, Biometric Society (British region) and International Association for Geriatrics and Gerontology (European Section - Biology). He was Specialist Adviser to the UK House of Lords Science & Technology Select Committee Inquiry into Ageing: Scientific Aspects17, advising the committee on its agenda, selection of witnesses and questions to be asked. For the UK [[Government Office for Science], he led a project on Mental Capital Through Life18 as part of a Foresight project on Mental Capital and Wellbeing. Kirkwood has served on several grants committees, editorial boards’ and as trustee director of multiple charitable bodies.

Awards and honours

• Karger Prize 1984 (international science prize for an article on cellular ageing)
• Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Budapest 1997
• Fellow, Academy of Medical Sciences 2001
• Honorary Fellow, Faculty of Actuaries 2002
• Royal Institution Dale Prize 2002 (subject of an editorial in Nature19)
• Honorary Life Member, Royal Institution 2002
• Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Hull 2003
• Cohen Medal of the British Society for Research on Ageing 2006
• Honorary Life Member, British Society for Research on Ageing 2011
• CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) 2009 (from Her Majesty the Queen)
• Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher Education 2009 (from Her Majesty the Queen; Kirkwood led the research programme on ageing for which this award was made to Newcastle University)
• Ipsen Foundation Longevity Prize 2011
• Fellow, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh 2013
• Nathan Shock Award Lecture, US National Institute on Aging 2016
• Paton Prize Lecture, World Congress of Physiology 2017

External links

• Biography at the NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre in Ageing