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The Longest American Lives

Everyone on BriefPeople who lived past 90, oldest first.

130 people

#	Person	Lived
1	Marjory Stoneman Douglas 1890–1998 Writer and activist whose advocacy was central to preserving the Florida Everglades as a national ecological treasure.	108 years
2	Ronald Coase 1910–2013 Developed transaction-cost theory of the firm and the Coase theorem while at Chicago.	103 years
3	Katherine Johnson 1918–2020 NASA mathematician whose orbital trajectory calculations supported the Mercury and Apollo crewed flights.	102 years
4	I. M. Pei 1917–2019 Architect whose monumental modern buildings reshaped American civic and cultural architecture.	102 years
5	David Rockefeller 1915–2017 Banker and philanthropist who directed the Rockefeller Foundation's global development efforts.	102 years
6	Irving Berlin 1888–1989 Songwriter whose vast catalog, from 'God Bless America' to Broadway standards, helped define the American popular songbook.	101 years
7	Alice Hamilton 1869–1970 Founded American industrial toxicology and documented workplace lead and chemical poisoning.	101 years
8	George F. Kennan 1904–2005 Diplomat whose Long Telegram and containment doctrine framed American Cold War strategy.	101 years
9	Strom Thurmond 1902–2003 Long-serving South Carolina senator who ran as a segregationist Dixiecrat and later joined the Republican Party.	101 years
10	Aaron T. Beck 1921–2021 Founder of cognitive behavioral therapy and the Beck Depression Inventory	100 years
11	Jimmy Carter 1924–2024 39th president who emphasized human rights, brokered the Camp David Accords, and built a major post-presidential humanitarian legacy.	100 years
12	Michael DeBakey 1908–2008 Cardiovascular surgeon who invented the roller pump and the Dacron arterial graft	100 years
13	Billy Graham 1918–2018 Evangelist whose mass crusades, media reach, and presidential relationships made him a defining figure in modern American Protestantism.	100 years
14	Alan Greenspan 1926–2026 Chaired the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006 across several financial crises.	100 years
15	Henry Kissinger 1923–2023 National security adviser and secretary of state who shaped détente, China policy, and controversial Cold War interventions.	100 years
16	Charles Townes 1915–2015 Physicist who invented the maser and co-invented the laser, earning a Nobel Prize.	100 years
17	John Wooden 1910–2010 UCLA basketball coach whose ten NCAA titles in twelve seasons remain the sport's benchmark dynasty.	100 years
18	Hans Bethe 1906–2005 Physicist who explained stellar energy production and led theoretical work at Los Alamos before becoming a prominent arms-control voice.	99 years
19	Louise Bourgeois 1911–2010 French-American sculptor whose giant spider sculptures and psychologically intense works explored trauma.	99 years
20	Philip Johnson 1906–2005 Named the International Style at MoMA, then built it and publicly repudiated it.	99 years
21	Georgia O'Keeffe 1887–1986 Modernist painter known for her enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes.	99 years
22	Robert Solow 1924–2023 Measured economic growth and found that most of it comes from technological progress, not capital.	99 years
23	John Paul Stevens 1920–2019 Long-serving justice whose opinions shaped civil liberties, administrative law, and limits on executive power.	99 years
24	Bob Dole 1923–2021 Wounded veteran and Senate leader who helped write the Americans with Disabilities Act.	98 years
25	John Kenneth Galbraith 1908–2006 Economist and public intellectual whose The Affluent Society critiqued American consumerism.	98 years
26	Matthew Ridgway 1895–1993 Army commander credited with restoring U.N. forces in Korea and later serving as NATO supreme commander and Army chief of staff.	98 years
27	John D. Rockefeller 1839–1937 Established the Rockefeller Foundation and funded medical research, education, and public health initiatives.	98 years
28	Roger Baldwin 1884–1981 Founder and first director of the American Civil Liberties Union	97 years
29	Jimmy Doolittle 1896–1993 Aeronautical engineer, pioneer of instrument flight, and leader of the 1942 raid on Tokyo	97 years
30	C. Everett Koop 1916–2013 Surgeon general whose public communication on AIDS, smoking, and child health reshaped national health policy.	97 years
31	Jim Lovell 1928–2025 Commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, whose calm leadership brought the crew home safely.	97 years
32	James Watson 1928–2025 Co-discoverer of the DNA double helix structure, earning a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.	97 years
33	Chuck Yeager 1923–2020 Air Force test pilot who first exceeded the speed of sound in level flight in 1947.	97 years
34	Kenneth Arrow 1921–2017 Economist whose impossibility theorem and work on general equilibrium, risk, and information reshaped modern economic theory.	96 years
35	Denton Cooley 1920–2016 Heart surgeon who performed the first successful American heart transplant and implanted the first total artificial heart	96 years
36	Frank Gehry 1929–2025 Developed a sculptural architectural language seen in the Walt Disney Concert Hall and other landmarks.	96 years
37	Katharine Hepburn 1907–2003 Four-time Oscar-winning actress whose independent spirit and wit made her a screen legend.	96 years
38	Estée Lauder 1908–2004 Cosmetics pioneer who built one of the world's largest beauty companies from her kitchen.	96 years
39	Studs Terkel 1912–2008 Oral historian and Chicago broadcaster who recorded working Americans in book-length interview collections.	96 years
40	Billy Wilder 1906–2002 Hollywood writer-director of Sunset Boulevard — Some Like It Hot and Double Indemnity.	96 years
41	Norman Borlaug 1914–2009 Agronomist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate whose Green Revolution wheat varieties saved billions from famine.	95 years
42	Frank Borman 1928–2023 Commander of Apollo 8, the first mission to orbit the Moon, and later CEO of Eastern Air Lines.	95 years
43	Phyllis Diller 1917–2012 Stand-up comedy	95 years
44	W.E.B. Du Bois 1868–1963 Sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist who was the first African American to earn a Harvard doctorate.	95 years
45	John Glenn 1921–2016 First American to orbit Earth and later the oldest person to fly in space at age 77.	95 years
46	Gene Hackman 1930–2025 Two-time Academy Award winner whose everyman intensity made him one of Hollywood's most respected actors.	95 years
47	Betty Moore 1928–2023 Co-founder of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, one of the largest environmental philanthropies.	95 years
48	Norman Vincent Peale 1898–1993 Minister whose bestselling positive-thinking message joined American Protestantism with modern self-help culture.	95 years
49	Sidney Poitier 1927–2022 First Black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, breaking barriers in Hollywood.	95 years
50	Benjamin Spock 1903–1998 Pediatrician whose 1946 baby-care manual reshaped postwar American child-rearing advice.	95 years
51	Edward Teller 1908–2003 Physicist and advocate of the hydrogen bomb whose work and policy influence shaped Cold War science and defense.	95 years
52	George H. W. Bush 1924–2018 41st president who managed the end of the Cold War and assembled the coalition for the Persian Gulf War.	94 years
53	Frank Capra 1897–1991 Three directing Oscars in five years, and the Christmas film nobody wanted in 1946.	94 years
54	Milton Friedman 1912–2006 Nobel Prize-winning economist whose free-market ideas profoundly influenced American economic policy.	94 years
55	Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. 1841–1935 Justice whose pragmatic jurisprudence and free-speech opinions deeply influenced American law.	94 years
56	Elia Kazan 1909–2003 Directed A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman and On the Waterfront, and named names to HUAC.	94 years
57	Mary Lasker 1900–1994 Turned advertising method into a lobbying machine and built federal funding for medical research.	94 years
58	Gordon Moore 1929–2023 Co-founder of Intel whose observation became Moore's Law, driving decades of semiconductor progress.	94 years
59	Gordon Parks 1912–2006 Photographer for Life magazine and first Black director of a major Hollywood studio film.	94 years
60	Faith Ringgold 1930–2024 Artist and author whose story quilts combine painting, quilting, and narrative to explore Black identity.	94 years
61	Paul Samuelson 1915–2009 First American to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, whose textbook defined the field for decades.	94 years
62	Ben Bradlee 1921–2014 Editor who built The Washington Post into a leading national newspaper and directed its Watergate coverage.	93 years
63	Walter Cronkite 1916–2009 CBS Evening News anchor known as the most trusted man in America during a pivotal era of broadcast journalism.	93 years
64	Willem de Kooning 1904–1997 Abstract expressionist whose gestural paintings helped define the New York School.	93 years
65	John Dewey 1859–1952 Philosopher and educational reformer whose progressive ideas shaped modern American pedagogy.	93 years
66	Betty Ford 1918–2011 First Lady who spoke publicly about her breast cancer and her addiction and founded a treatment center.	93 years
67	Gerald Ford 1913–2006 38th president who restored basic governmental stability after Watergate and controversially pardoned Richard Nixon.	93 years
68	Yuri Kochiyama 1921–2014 Grassroots activist who connected Asian American, Black liberation, antiwar, and reparations movements.	93 years
69	Willie Mays 1931–2024 Baseball icon known as the Say Hey Kid, widely considered one of the greatest all-around players ever.	93 years
70	Robert McNamara 1916–2009 Secretary of Defense who applied systems analysis to the Pentagon and escalated the Vietnam War.	93 years
71	Robert Moses 1888–1981 Master builder whose roads, parks, and public works reshaped metropolitan New York while displacing communities and entrenching car dependence.	93 years
72	Mother Jones 1837–1930 Organizer whose militant campaigns for miners and against child labor made her an icon of American labor.	93 years
73	Sandra Day O'Connor 1930–2023 First woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, appointed by President Reagan.	93 years
74	Linus Pauling 1901–1994 Chemist and peace activist who won two unshared Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Peace.	93 years
75	Ronald Reagan 1911–2004 40th president whose conservative domestic program and assertive Cold War strategy reshaped American politics.	93 years
76	Pat Robertson 1930–2023 Founded the Christian Broadcasting Network and, after a failed 1988 presidential run, the Christian Coalition.	93 years
77	Helen Thomas 1920–2013 Pioneering White House correspondent who covered every president from Kennedy to Obama.	93 years
78	Robert Venturi 1925–2018 Architect and author of Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture	93 years
79	Barbara Walters 1929–2022 Pioneering broadcast journalist who became the first female co-anchor of a network evening news program.	93 years
80	John Atanasoff 1903–1995 Physicist who built the first electronic digital computer, the Atanasoff-Berry Computer.	92 years
81	Ray Bradbury 1920–2012 Science fiction writer whose Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles became American classics.	92 years
82	Julia Child 1912–2004 Cookbook author and television host who transformed American home cooking and popular attitudes toward food.	92 years
83	Charles W. Eliot 1834–1926 Rebuilt Harvard into the first modern American research university and gave undergraduates the elective system.	92 years
84	Daniel Ellsberg 1931–2023 Leaked the Pentagon Papers and put the government's own account of Vietnam on the record.	92 years
85	Chuck Feeney 1931–2023 Duty Free Shops founder who gave away his entire fortune anonymously through Atlantic Philanthropies.	92 years
86	Alger Hiss 1904–1996 State Department official whose perjury conviction made Richard Nixon's career and split American opinion for decades.	92 years
87	Clark Kerr 1911–2003 Architect of California's 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education	92 years
88	Sanford Meisner 1905–1997 Acting teacher who created the Meisner technique	92 years
89	Rosa Parks 1913–2005 Civil rights activist whose refusal to give up her bus seat sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.	92 years
90	Alice Paul 1885–1977 Strategist of the final campaign for women's suffrage and author of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment.	92 years
91	Menachem Mendel Schneerson 1902–1994 Led Chabad-Lubavitch from Brooklyn for 43 years and sent married emissaries to more than 100 countries.	92 years
92	Paul Volcker 1927–2019 Broke 1970s inflation as Federal Reserve chairman through sustained high interest rates.	92 years
93	E. O. Wilson 1929–2021 Biologist whose studies of ants, biodiversity, and sociobiology reshaped ecology, evolution, and conservation debate.	92 years
94	Frank Lloyd Wright 1867–1959 Architect and engineer whose organic architecture, including Fallingwater, reshaped the built environment.	92 years
95	John Adams 1735–1826 Second President and key Founding Father who helped secure independence and shaped early American diplomacy.	91 years
96	Stella Adler 1901–1992 Acting teacher who trained Marlon Brando and broke with Lee Strasberg	91 years
97	William Anders 1933–2024 Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic Earthrise photograph, changing humanity's view of our planet.	91 years
98	Clara Barton 1821–1912 Civil War nurse who founded the American Red Cross and pioneered disaster relief in America.	91 years
99	Chuck Berry 1926–2017 Guitarist and songwriter whose music established core sounds, themes, and performance styles of rock and roll.	91 years
100	William J. Brennan Jr. 1906–1997 Influential justice who expanded civil liberties, equality doctrine, and application of the Bill of Rights to the states.	91 years
101	Michael Collins 1930–2021 Apollo 11 command module pilot who orbited alone behind the Moon while Armstrong and Aldrin walked below.	91 years
102	Quincy Jones 1933–2024 Arranged for Sinatra and Basie, scored the films, and produced Thriller.	91 years
103	Stephanie Kwolek 1923–2014 Invented Kevlar aramid fiber while working as a DuPont research chemist.	91 years
104	Lucy Parsons 1851–1942 Radical labor organizer and writer who advocated for workers, free speech, and racial and gender equality over seven decades.	91 years
105	Oral Roberts 1918–2009 Moved Pentecostal healing services from the revival tent onto national television, and built a university on the proceeds.	91 years
106	J. D. Salinger 1919–2010 Author whose fiction, especially The Catcher in the Rye, became a lasting touchstone of adolescent alienation.	91 years
107	Alfred P. Sloan 1875–1966 General Motors leader who established the multidivisional corporation and professional management systems copied across industry.	91 years
108	Stephen Sondheim 1930–2021 Composer and lyricist whose formal and psychological innovations transformed the American musical theater.	91 years
109	Harriet Tubman 1822–1913 Abolitionist who escaped slavery and led hundreds to freedom via the Underground Railroad.	91 years
110	William Westmoreland 1914–2005 Commander in Vietnam whose attrition strategy and optimistic troop estimates collided with the Tet Offensive.	91 years
111	Saul Bellow 1915–2005 Novelist whose intellectually rich fiction explored individuality, urban life, and the immigrant experience in modern America.	90 years
112	John C. Bogle 1929–2019 Founded Vanguard and launched the first index mutual fund for retail investors.	90 years
113	Aaron Copland 1900–1990 Composer whose accessible modernist works created an enduring musical language associated with American landscapes and identity.	90 years
114	Murray Gell-Mann 1929–2019 Theoretical physicist who discovered quarks and won the Nobel Prize for his standard model of particle physics.	90 years
115	Herbert Hoover 1874–1964 Engineer and relief administrator whose presidency was consumed by the onset of the Great Depression.	90 years
116	Jane Jacobs 1916–2006 Writer and activist whose defense of mixed, walkable neighborhoods transformed urban planning.	90 years
117	Chuck Jones 1912–2002 Warner Bros. animator who directed many of the studio's Bugs Bunny and Road Runner shorts.	90 years
118	Daniel Kahneman 1934–2024 Israeli-American psychologist who won the Nobel Prize for his work on behavioral economics and decision-making.	90 years
119	B.B. King 1925–2015 Singer and guitarist whose expressive style brought electric blues to a worldwide audience and influenced generations of musicians.	90 years
120	Harper Lee 1926–2016 Author of To Kill a Mockingbird, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that shaped America's conversation on race.	90 years
121	Loretta Lynn 1932–2022 Country singer and songwriter who wrote Coal Miner's Daughter and The Pill	90 years
122	Cormac McCarthy 1933–2023 Novelist whose stark, violent prose in Blood Meridian and The Road earned him a Pulitzer Prize.	90 years
123	Barbara McClintock 1902–1992 Cytogeneticist who discovered transposable elements and won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.	90 years
124	George McGovern 1922–2012 South Dakota senator and 1972 presidential nominee who led opposition to the Vietnam War.	90 years
125	Arthur Miller 1915–2005 Playwright whose Death of a Salesman and The Crucible are cornerstones of American drama.	90 years
126	A. Philip Randolph 1889–1979 Labor and civil-rights leader who pressured presidents to desegregate defense work and the armed forces.	90 years
127	Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. 1917–2007 Historian of American liberalism and special assistant to John F. Kennedy	90 years
128	Rose Schneiderman 1882–1972 Labor organizer who championed women workers, workplace safety, and social reforms later incorporated into the New Deal.	90 years
129	Upton Sinclair 1878–1968 Novelist whose expose of Chicago meatpacking spurred federal food and drug inspection laws.	90 years
130	Rosalyn Yalow 1921–2011 Invented radioimmunoassay with Solomon Berson, refused to patent it, and took the 1977 Nobel alone.	90 years