In fact, that interpretation was so convincing to a major personality, of the few there were at that time in the field of aging, that he, and his name is Nathan Shock, a man in the United States who's given credit for the establishment of research in... bio gerontology in the United States, meaning the study of aging... aging in its biological aspects, fundamental biological aspects.

Nathan learned of my work, invited me to the University of Maryland in Baltimore, which was actually part of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at that time; there was not a National Institute of Aging in those days. And Nathan invited me to give a lecture there, which I did reluctantly because I still was not totally convinced that what I had found had anything to do with biological aging. But I did indeed give the lecture.

Nathan then pushed me along; he invited... had me invited to a meeting in California at a resort near San Diego, I recall, because this was my first visit to California, for that meeting, and I was impressed with the fact that, first of all, I had been invited and, secondly, I was mingling with only about 12 or 15 people at this meeting, that had to do with the epidemiology of aging. But there were no biologists there, other than myself, and I gave a paper and the people there were major figures in geriatric medicine. So I was quite impressed with that invitation. And Nathan remained a close friend until his death, and I had subsequent interactions with him that were very significant that I'll describe later.