Josh Mitteldorf, PhD

Josh Mitteldorf is best known for contributions to the biology of aging. He has written two books based on his evolutionary theory of aging [Popular, Academic], and blogs for ScienceBlog.com about aging and related matters. DataBETA is his present scientific project, a survey of thousands of individuals who are early adopters in anti-aging medicine, together with technology that will determine which (if any) of their pills and diets are effective. Most of his academic papers are available from ReserachGate. He maintains a page of health and diet recommendations for a longer life at AgingAdvice.org. He is a writer in genres besides science: poetry, political commentary, and a bit of fiction. His “anti-blog” called Daily Inspiration has been posted continually since 2005. He was formerly an editor at OpEdNews. As “Doctor Math”, he contributed more than 5,000 responses to questions submitted at the MathForum in the 1990s. Mitteldorf is an avid amateur musician. He plays piano in chamber music groups, and occasionally provides entertainment at fundraisers and social events. He plays French Horn in a wind quintet and a community orchestra near where he lives in Philadelphia. Mitteldorf has a daily practice of yoga and meditation. He is an active member of Springboard Meditation Sangha, and has taught a weekly yoga class since 1977. In the 1990s, he created a software package that performs “every financial calculation you can imagine”, including amortizations, mortgage refinance, present values, and actuarial calculations. Since that time, he has been an occasional consultant in financial computation. Mitteldorf speaks Chinese, and has studied, lived, and worked in China. For twenty years, he was married to Alice Ballard, a prominent Philadelphia civil rights attorney. Together, Mitteldorf and Ballard broke diplomatic ground for Chinese adoption, and their two grown daughters were among the first girls to be adopted from PRC in the 1980s. Politically, he has been an advocate for peace, for democracy, for environmental sanity, and for public health. He was treasurer of the Delaware Valley Clean Air Council and president of the Coalition for a Tobacco-Free Pennsylvania in the 1990s. Since 2005, he has been a statistical consultant and writer for the election integrity movement, which seeks transparency in the way our votes are counted. Mitteldorf grew up in New York City and suburbs, graduated from the Harvard College Physics Department (1970), and continued to a PhD in astrophysics from University of Pennsylvania (1987). His book "Cracking the Aging Code", is available here: http://tinyurl.com/y7yovp87.