Thomas Burton Loram Kirkwood

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

FMedSci (6 July 1951,

Durban Durban ( ) ( zu, eThekwini, from meaning 'the port' also called zu, eZibubulungwini for the mountain range that terminates in the area), nicknamed ''Durbs'',Ishani ChettyCity nicknames in SA and across the worldArticle on ''news24.com'' from ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

) is an English biologist who made his contribution to the biology of ageing by proposing the

disposable soma theory of aging The disposable soma theory of aging states that organisms age due to an evolutionary trade-off between growth, reproduction, and DNA repair maintenance. Formulated by Thomas Kirkwood, the disposable soma theory explains that an organism only has ...

. He is currently a researcher and Associate Dean for Ageing in

Newcastle University Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a UK public university, public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is ...

and he headed the Institute for Ageing and Health in its school of clinical medical sciences. 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 The Reith Lectures is a series of annual BBC radio lectures given by leading figures of the day. They are commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on Radio 4 and the World Service. The lectures were inaugurated in 1948 to mark the historic contribu ...

. Kirkwood was appointed

Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(CBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.

Footnotes

External links

Biography
at the NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre in Ageing * 20th-century British biologists 21st-century British biologists 1951 births Living people Commanders of the Order of the British Empire {{UK-biologist-stub