S. Jay Olshansky facts for kids

Stuart Jay Olshansky is a professor who studies how people age and how long they live. He works at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also helps lead a company called Lapetus Solutions, Inc.

Professor Olshansky is also a researcher at the Center on Aging at the University of Chicago. He is an editor for a science magazine called Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences and Biogerontology. He also helps with other science magazines.

His main work is to understand how living things survive and eventually die. He studies how long humans can live. He also looks at how aging affects people's health and public rules. His research helps predict how many people will be alive and how old they will be in the future. He also looks for ways to slow down aging in people.

About Stuart Jay Olshansky

Stuart Jay Olshansky was born on February 22, 1954. He went to Michigan State University and earned a degree in psychology in 1975. Later, he studied at the University of Chicago. He received his master's degree in sociology in 1982. He then earned his Ph.D. (a high-level degree) in sociology from the same university in 1984.

His work on how populations change over time has received funding from important groups. These include the National Institute on Aging and the U.S. Social Security Administration.

In 2011, he wrote an article about how long United States presidents live. This article was published in a well-known medical magazine.

Professor Olshansky received a special award in 2005/2006. It was a Senior Fulbright Award to teach in France. In 2010, he became a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America. This means he was recognized for his important work in aging studies. In 2016, he received two more awards for his research.

Olshansky strongly supports scientific efforts to help people live healthier for longer. He believes it's more important to have a healthy long life than just a very long life. He has talked about studying things like eating fewer calories. He also supports studying people who live to be 100 years old or more. He has written books about aging and living longer.

The Lifespan Bet

On September 15, 2000, Professor Olshansky made a famous bet. He made it with another scientist named Steven N. Austad. Austad had said that the first person to live to 150 years old was probably already alive.

Olshansky and Austad bet on whether someone born before the year 2000 would still be alive and thinking clearly on January 1, 2150. Austad thought it was possible, but Olshansky believed it was unlikely anyone would live past 130.

They each put $150 into a special investment fund. The money, plus any earnings, will go to the winner or their family in 2150. They later added another $150 each to the fund.