Randy Gardner (born c. 1946) is an American from San Diego, California, who set the record for the longest amount of time a human has gone without sleep.In December 1963/January 1964, 17-year-old Gardner stayed awake for 11 days and 25 minutes (264.4 hours), breaking the previous record of 260 hours held by Tom Rounds.. Gardner's record attempt was attended by Stanford sleep researcher Dr ....