Shock, Nathan Wetherill 1906-

Nathan Wetherill Shock, a renowned gerontologist, was born in Lafayette, Indiana on December 25, 1906, the son of Blanche Vandelia Stults, a grade school teacher, and Joseph Henry Shock, a teacher of mathematics, high school principal, and later professor of mathematics at Purdue University. Nathan Shock grew up in Lafayette, received a degree in chemical engineering from Purdue in 1926, and the master's degree in organic chemistry the following year. In 1928 Shock married Margaret B. Truman, a Lafayette resident. In 1930 Shock received a Ph.D. in physiological psychology at the University of Chicago and stayed on as a research associate in the pediatrics department while teaching physiology for two years.

In 1932 Shock went to the University of California, Berkeley, as research associate in the Institute of Child Welfare and assistant professor in physiology, staying until 1941. It was at Berkeley that he learned the value of performing longitudinal studies of humans to assess changes over time in a group of 100 boys and girls who were followed from age 10 to 18 years. Measurement of physiologic changes in infants at the University of Chicago became measurement of changes in adolescents at the University of California, and at the Gerontology Research Center in Baltimore became measurement of physiologic change over time in groups of elderly subjects.

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