Emily Chan
The average retirement age in America is 61-years-old, but one doctor has continued working for decades after he passed his sixties.
He is currently the oldest practicing doctor alive. Howard Tucker, a neurologist from Ohio, has been working in the field of medicine for 75 years now.
He celebrated his 100th birthday in July of this year. Last year, he was named the world’s oldest practicing doctor by Guinness World Records.
Howard decided to apply for the record title after coming across an obituary of someone who was deemed the oldest practicing barber.
Other than medicine, one of his other passions is the law. At the age of 67, he passed the Ohio State Bar. This man never stops learning!
“I would tell my teenage self to learn each day as if I were to live forever and to live each day as if I were to die tomorrow. I would regard this Guinness World Records title as a singular honor and would look upon it as another achievement in a long, satisfying and happy life,” he said.
Howard has no plans to retire since it simply does not interest him. Back in 2021, he was still seeing patients with enthusiasm, saying that he would “still become excited when seeing a patient with a diagnostic problem I had never seen before or seeing a patient with a problem I have not encountered in 20-50 years.”
While he no longer sees patients, Howard still teaches at St. Vincent Charity Medical Center in Cleveland.
Howard and his wife Sara have been married for 65 years. Sara is still a practicing psychiatrist at 89, and they share four children, all of whom are college graduates and practicing professionals following in their father’s footsteps. Three are physicians, and one is an attorney.
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