At the end of the eighteenth century, Buffon estimated that a healthy man who had never suffered an accident or illness could live for a hundred years but no longer. Centenerians were extremely rare. However, thanks toimproved living conditions and progress in medicine, a few individuals began to reach the ages of 110 and even 115, and the hypothesized maximum life span was revised to 110 and then to 120 years. In 1995, thistheoretical limit was pushed even further back when Jeanne Calment a Frenchwoman, celebrated her 20th birthday. When she died in 1997 at age 122, she set a new record for human longevity.

Most centenarians are women

The probability of living to age 100 is higher now than ever before. According to recent estimates, there may well be 200,000 centenarians in France by 2060, compared with 15,000 in 2010 and only a hundred or so in 1900. Since 1980, a new "super-centenarian" age group has become a statistical reality.It includes people over 110 years of age. At these advanced ages, women are by far the majority. They outnumber men by six to one after age 100 (in 2010).

Is there a maximum human lifespan?

Until the 1970s, it was generally agreed that the progress achieved since the eighteenth century had simply brought the mean length of life closerto the maximum possible human lifespan(120 years), which was considered to be a fixedbiological boundary. Today, scientists do not rule out the possibility of human beings living up to age150 or even more, if progress in our knowledge of genetics and ageing enables us to slow down oreven stop the biological processes involved.