  Since 1990 Jeanne Louise Calment has held the record for human longevity. She
was born on 21 February 1875, became the longest-lived human on 12 May 1990
when she was 115.21 and died on 4 August 1997 at age 122.45 years. In this
chapter, we use data available on 25 September 2017 on people who reached age
110, supercentenarians, to address the following questions: 1. How likely is it
that a person has reached age 122.45? 2. How unlikely is it that Calment's
record has not yet been broken? 3. How soon might it be broken? Assuming a
constant annual probability of death of 50% after age 110, we found that the
probability that a person who survived to age 110 would have lived to 122.45 by
25 September 2017 is 17.1%. Furthermore, we calculated that there was only a
20.3% chance that Calment's record would have been broken after 1997 but before
2017. Finally, we estimated that there is less than a 50% chance that someone
will surpass Calment's lifespan before 2045. Jeanne Louise Calment's record is
exceptional but not impossible. It does not provide evidence that her lifespan
is an upper limit to human lifespans.
