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122 years, 5 months and 14 days. I don’t know whether I will live to this age. But what I do know is that this is the documented record for the maximum human lifespan, so far.

The holder of this spectacular record is Madame Jeanne Louise Calment. She lived from 21 February 1875 to 4 August 1997, in the city of Arles in France. Although other claims have been made of much longer lifespans, for example 150 or 175 years, my gerontologist colleagues have always rejected such claims as unproven, and most probably fake.

Of course, 122 years is no age at all compared with what Methuselah supposedly achieved. According to the Old Testament, Methuselah lived to the ripe old age of 969. Still, the Bible is not the only religious text in which a description of people living to hundreds or even thousands of years can be found. Almost all cultures have myths that tell similar tales of extremely long lives. Nevertheless, most scientists regard such claims as just that: myths, fanciful tales, the stuff of imagination.

The maximum lifespan of a species usually refers to data from the zoological records on how long any one individual of that species has survived so far. It also tells us that even though only one individual has reached that age so far, it is possible, in principle, for all other members of that species to also reach or potentially exceed that limit.

We do not know when the human maximum lifespan record, held by Madame Calment, will be broken. We cannot predict exactly how long any person will live. Even after a terrible car accident or a terminal cancer diagnosis, there is no sure way to tell at what age or at what point in time the individual’s death will occur. Nobody could predict that 4 August 1997 would be the last day of Madame Calment’s life. Did she herself think that was the right time for her to die?

The maximum lifespan for humans is not a permanent, fixed limit. Sooner or later, Madame Calment’s record will be broken. I know it will. After all, I am a biogerontologist!

Somehow we find it easier to bear the death of a person like Madame Calment, who died at an advanced age. On the other hand, it is extremely traumatic and difficult to face the death of a small child or a young person. That is how it was for my father when he mourned the death of his grandson of 17. That was definitely not the right time for Hannibal to die.

We also have other ways of measuring lifespan. The average lifespan of a population, for instance. Governments depend on this type of lifespan measurement to make various social-policy decisions, such as setting the age of retirement. Statisticians and demographers also make calculations and qualified guesses about this so-called future life expectancy. Such projections influence the government’s socio-political planning to optimise the use of available resources. However, such estimates about future average lifespan do not rule out the possibility that an individual may die much earlier, or much later, than the theoretical average.

There is a very interesting and true story about taking life expectancy at face value. A story with dire consequences. In 1955, Madame Calment had already lived ten years longer than the expected lifespan of French women at that time. Perhaps that is why, around that time, her attorney offered to buy her house through the French viager system.

The viager system of buying and selling property follows a set of simple but somewhat peculiar rules. Basically, the seller agrees to sell the property at about 30% of its current market value. The seller then receives an agreed sum of money every month as an annuity or pension (the rente viagère) for rest of their life, along with retaining the right of usage (droit d’usage) over the property.

The attorney, who was considering Madame Calment’s already advanced age of 80 and the reliability of the statistical predictions, thought he had made a wonderful bargain. As it turned out, the property deal turned into a 42-year-long financial nightmare. Both the attorney and his son ended up dying before Madame Calment did, and paying far more than the actual price of the house.