Jeanne Calment outlived her daughter and grandson by decades, finally succumbing to natural causes at the ripe old age of 122. Calment, who was French and died almost two decades ago, is thought to be world's longest living person. But if subsequent advances in medicine have lulled you into thinking that you might exceed this record, think again.
An analysis of global demographic data published in Nature suggests that humans have a fixed shelf life, and that the odds of someone beating Calment’s record are low—although some scientists question this interpretation. They say that the data used in the analysis is not unequivocal, and that the paper doesn’t account for future advances in medicine.
