Jeanne Louise Calment lived for 122 years and 164 days, the oldest verified age of any person, ever. Her interviews revealed a portrait of the centenarian in high spirits: “I've only ever had one wrinkle, and I'm sitting on it,” she told reporters when she turned 110. Calment died in 1997 in Arles, France, where she spent much of her impressively long life. No one else, according to accurate records, has lived beyond 120 years.
Whether there’s a limit to the human life span is an age-old question. An actuary named Benjamin Gompertz proposed in 1825 that mortality rates accelerate exponentially as we grow older. Under what is known as the Gompertz law, the odds of dying double every eight years. That seems to be the rule for people ages 30 to 80.
But researchers disagree about what happens to mortality rates very late in life. A new study, published in the journal Science, indicates that the Grim Reaper suddenly eases off the accelerator.
