| James Vaupel | |
 | |
| Birth: | 2 May 1945 New York City, New York, United States |
| Death: | 27 March 2022 United States |
| Age: | 76 years, 329 days |
| Country: |  USA
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| ' | |
James Walton Vaupel (2 May 1945 – 27 March 2022) was an American scientist in the fields of aging research, biodemography, and formal demography. He has been instrumental in developing and advancing the idea of the plasticity of longevity, and pioneered research on the heterogeneity of mortality risks and on the deceleration of death rates at the highest ages.[1][2][3][4][5]
Biography
James Vaupel was born in New York City, New York, United States on 2 May 1945.
Later positions
Vaupel was the founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany (since 1996). He was also a research professor at Duke University and the director of its Population, Policy, Aging and Research Center. Vaupel was a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, a regular scientific member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been involved in many endeavors and published over 20 books.
Vaupel died on 27 March 2022 at the age of 76 years, 329 days, after a brief period of critical illness.
Contributions
Convinced that formal demography is the source of the discipline’s strength, Vaupel has contributed to the methodological foundations of demography. In 2001 he was awarded by the Population Association of America the Irene B. Taeuber Award for his lifetime research achievements. In 2008 he received the Mindel C. Sheps Award for his work in mathematical demography.
Vaupel has been a leading proponent of the idea of the plasticity of longevity. Many people believe there is a looming limit to human life expectancy. Vaupel’s research shows that life expectancy is likely to increase well beyond the purported limit of 85 years. Furthermore, Vaupel and others (such as Bernard Jeune of Denmark) advanced a new proposition: that the human lifespan]] is not fixed, but is a function of life expectancy and population size.[4] He and S. Jay Olshansky have had a disagreement about what this means in terms of future projections of the human life span.
Vaupel’s work also focuses on the nascent field of evolutionary demography. His research activities here strive to understand age-specific mortality in terms of the evolutionary processes that shape it.
Because in his studies, particular attention is paid to mortality improvements at the end of the lifespan, Vaupel has been instrumental in the emerging field of research into supercentenarians as a population subset. The number of persons aged 110+ in a single European nation is rather small. Vaupel therefore began the push in 2000 by inviting experts from around the world to meet in international workshops and to found the International Database on Longevity, which provides information on individuals attaining extreme ages and permits demographic analysis of mortality at the highest ages.
References
- ↑ The Impact of Heterogeneity in Individual Frailty on the Dynamics of Mortality Demography, 1979
- ↑ The heritability of human longevity: A population-based study of 2872 Danish twin pairs born 1870–1900 Human Genetics, March 1996
- ↑ Biodemographic Trajectories of Longevity Science, 8 May 1998
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 DEMOGRAPHY: Enhanced: Broken Limits to Life Expectancy Science, 10 May 2002
- ↑ AGING: It's Never Too Late Science, 19 September 2003
- Contributors International Database on Longevity
- Prof. Dr. James W. Vaupel Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
- Publications by year - James W. Vaupel Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
- Past Workshops Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Archived)
- Irene B.Taeuber Awardees Population Association of America (Archived)
- Mindel C. Sheps Awardees Population Association of America (Archived)
- Hell No, We Won't Go! Surprising demographic trends raise a tough question: Will the elderly live so long that society can't cope? CNN Money, 19 July 1999
- Emergence of supercentenarians in low mortality countries North American Actuarial Journal (Volume 6, pages 54-53), 2002
- Staying Alive Discover, 6 November 2003
- Post-Darwinian Longevity Population and Development Review (Volume 29), 2003
- The Plasticity of Longevity: Interview with James Vaupel SAGE Crossroads, 14 December 2004 (Archived)
- Founding Director James W. Vaupel Passed Away Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, 28 March 2022
- James W. Vaupel (1945-2022) Population Europe