The following article is an edited transcript of the Von Hippel Award address, given by recipient Larry L. Hench at the 1998 MRS Fall Meeting on December 3, 1998. Hench received the Materials Research Society's highest honor for “pioneering accomplishments in the field of glass and ceramics, including the demonstration of the first bioactive glass called Bioglass® and subsequent expansion of the field, demonstration of the feasibility of encapsulating nuclear waste products in glass/ceramic matrices, and development of sol-gel processing to produce ultrahigh-purity optical and dielectric materials with controlled microstructures.”

The problem our Society faces as we head into the next millennium is that our average age expectancy has increased to a very attractive number of years but our bodies begin to deteriorate long before then. With the use of antiseptics, anti-biotics, and vaccinations during this Century, we have increased our survival rate considerably, as shown in Figure 1. The average age expectancy has increased to the mid-70s for many countries. However, as we pass the age of 30, our bodies begin to deteriorate. The quality of our connective tissues, particularly our skeletal tissues that hold us upright, begins to decline. The volume of bone that Supports us decreases with time, and for at least some of us, the weight our bones have to bear increases with time. The net effect is that the strength of bone degrades with age, causing the probability of fracture to increase (Figure 2). lf we integrate the area under the curve in Figure 1 from 60 years onward to 90 years, multiply it by the couple of billion people on earth, and then multiply that by the fraction of people subject to bone failure (Figure 2), we have a catastrophic repair problem facing society.