Devoted to the description of The Georgia Centenarian Study, an interdisciplinary study of the "oldest-old," conducted by the University of Georgia and the Medical College of Georgia. Consisting of eight papers, this special issue covers most of the domains of the study. A paper discussing the potentials of the study, and abstracts of the peer reviewers comments is also included. One of the pioneers in centenarian research, Dr. Belle Boone Beard donated her archival data consisting of more than 3000 case studies of centenarians provided the impetus of this systematic study of the "oldest-old." The last paper in this special issue is a review of Dr. Beard's book, "Centenarians: The New Generation".