Longest-lived woman’s age, identity disputed
Jeanne Calment died in 1997 in the southern French town in which she was born, and her death drew a flurry of attention.
At 122, an age that had been certified by the Guinness World Records as well as public health researchers, she was the oldest documented person to ever have lived.
But a Russian mathematician is casting doubt on her record. Nikolay Zak, of the Moscow Center For Continuous Mathematical Education, said in a report that he believes that Calment was actually Yvonne Calment, Jeanne’s daughter, who had assumed her mother’s identity to avoid inheritance taxes in the 1930s. That would have made her 99 when she died.
The evidence produced by Zak in a paper published recently on the portal Researchgate is not definitive.
He points to studies that showed that Calment had lost less than an inch of her height by the time she was well into her hundreds, significantly less than what would have been expected. A passport for Jeanne in the 1930s lists a different eye color for her than she had later in life. And he raises questions about other physical discrepancies in her forehead and chin. He also claims that Calment had destroyed photographs and other family documents when she had been requested to send them to the archives in her hometown of Arles.
The study has caused a global stir since it was issued, but it has been denounced by some scientists, including the Jean-marie Robine, who validated Calment’s age and wrote a book about her around the time of her death.
“All of this is incredibly shaky and rests on nothing,” Robine told Le Parisien.
According to Smithsonian magazine, he said Jeanne answered questions when he interviewed her that only she would have known the answer to, like the name of her math teacher and housekeepers in her building at the time.
Michel Vauzelle, who was the mayor of Arles when Calment died, has said Zak’s theory is “completely impossible and ridiculous.”
Nicolas Brouard, research director at France’s National Demographics Studies Institute, said some researchers favor exhuming the two women’s bodies or using DNA testing to settle the debate.
In an email, Zak told the Washington Post that he became convinced that Calment’s age was suspicious in February while studying mortality patterns of people older then 105.
“I funded the work myself, it was a fascinating detective story in front of me,” he said of his investigation into her life. “Those who criticize my work heavily are those who have a huge conflict of interest or those who didn’t read it.”
Still, he admitted to Reuters that he does not have “cast-iron proof.”
Guinness World Records said that it was aware of the report and was investigating.
Questions about agerelated records are not uncommon. Shigechiyo Izumi, of Japan, was dubbed the world’s oldest man when he died in 1986 at what was believed to be 120 years old. But research that came out later claimed that he was around 105. Others claiming ages 125 and up have lacked the required documentation to prove their ages.