Randy Gardner (born c. 1946) is an American man from San Diego, California, who once held the record for the longest amount of time a human has gone without sleep.
Gardner's record attempt was attended by Stanford sleep researcher Dr. William C. Dement, while his health was monitored by Lt. Cmdr.
[5][6][7] It has been claimed that Gardner's experiment demonstrated that extreme sleep deprivation has little effect, other than the mood changes associated with tiredness,[8] primarily due to a report by researcher William C. Dement, who stated that on the tenth day of the experiment, Gardner had been, among other things, able to beat Dement at pinball.
However, contrary to this, Lieutenant Commander John J. Ross, who monitored his health, reported serious cognitive and behavioral changes.
[13] Some sources report that Gardner's record was broken a month later by Toimi Silvo, in Hamina, Finland, who stayed awake for 11+1⁄2 days, or 276 hours from February 5–15, 1964.
[15] Because of the policy against maintaining this record, recent editions of Guinness do not provide any information about sleep deprivation.