How tall was the tallest man ever recorded, in metres?

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2.72 metres. Robert Wadlow reached 2.72 metres (8 ft 11.1 in) before his death in 1940 at just 22. He was still growing when he died, the result of an untreatable pituitary condition. He needed leg braces to walk and had almost no feeling in his feet. Bound it by physiology. Human height is limited by the square-cube relationship — bone strength grows with cross-section while weight grows with volume — so beyond a certain point a skeleton cannot support itself. Start from the tallest people you have ever seen in person, then picture someone a full head and more above even them: the record sits close to that physical ceiling, not comfortably below it. The cause is the medical fact: an untreatable pituitary condition causing continuous growth. Everyone in the extreme tail of human height has a specific endocrine condition rather than unusual genetics for height, which is why the tail is short and why the record has stood since 1940. The consequences in the explanation are what the number actually meant to live with: leg braces required to walk, almost no feeling in the feet, and death at twenty-two while still growing. The square-cube limit is not an abstraction — it is the reason a record like this is a medical history rather than an athletic achievement.

Source	Guinness World Records
Figure refers to	1940
Last checked	October 5, 2026
Unit	metres

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