Jeanne Calment

Jeanne Calment
Born	Jeanne Louise Calment 21 Feb 1875 Arles, France
Died	4 Aug 1997, aged 122 years 164 days (disputed) Arles, France
Burial place	Trinquetaille Cemetery, Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône, France
Known for	Longest documented human lifespan – since 30 March 1991 Oldest living person (7 July 1990 – 4 August 1997)
Spouse(s)	Fernand Calment (m. 8 April 1896, d. 2 October 1942)
Children	1

Jeanne Louise Calment (ʒan lwiz kalmɑ̃; 21 February 1875 – 4 August 1997, disputed) was a French supercentenarian. With a claimed lifespan of 122 years and 164 days. According to Guinness World Records, she is the oldest person in history whose age has been verified.[1] Her longevity attracted media attention and medical studies of her health and lifestyle. If authentic, Calment would be the only person in history who has been verified to have reached the age of 120.

According to census records, Calment outlived both her daughter and her grandson.[2] In January 1988, she was widely reported to be the oldest living person in the world. In 1995, at age 120, she was declared to be the oldest person in history with a verified date of birth.[3]

In 2019, Russian mathematician Nikolay Zak published a paper disputing her age. He listed a number of inconsistencies in her documents, photos and testimony. Zak proposed a hypothesis that Jeanne had really died in 1934 and that her daughter Yvonne had switched identities. Initially the suggested motive was inheritance tax evasion.

Early life

Birth certificate of Jeanne Calment

Calment was born on 21 February 1875 in Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône, Provence.[1] Some of her close family members also had above-average lifespans. Her older brother, François (1865–1962), lived to the age of 97; her father, Nicolas (1837–1931), who was a shipbuilder, lived to be 93 years of age; and her mother, Marguerite Gilles (1838–1924), who was from a family of millers, lived to be 86 years of age.[2]

According to her own testimony, Calment attended Mrs Benet's church primary school in Arles from age seven until her First Communion, and then the local collège (secondary school), finishing at 16 with the brevet classique diploma. Reports in the local paper confirm her attendance, but she is not listed with her classmates as having completed the diploma. Asked about her daily routine while at primary school, she replied that "when you are young, you get up at eight o'clock". In lieu of a solid breakfast, she would have either coffee with milk, or hot chocolate, and at noon her father would pick her up from school to have lunch at home before she returned to school for the afternoon. In the following years, she continued to live with her parents, awaiting marriage, painting, and improving her piano skills.[4]

Adult life

On 8 April 1896, at the age of 21, Jeanne married her double second cousin, Fernand Nicolas Calment (1868–1942). Their paternal grandfathers were brothers, and their paternal grandmothers were sisters.[2] He had reportedly started courting her when she was 15, but Jeanne was "too young to be interested in boys".[5] Fernand was heir to a drapery business located in a classic Provençal-style building in the centre of Arles, and the couple moved into a spacious apartment above the family store.[2] Jeanne employed servants and never had to work. According to her own words she led a leisurely but active lifestyle within the upper society of Arles, pursuing hobbies such as fencing, cycling, tennis, swimming, rollerskating, playing the piano, and making music with friends.[5] In the summer, the couple would stay at Uriage for mountaineering on the glacier. They also went hunting for rabbits and wild boars in the hills of Provence, using an "18mm rifle". Calment said she disliked shooting birds.[5] According to the New York Times, at the outbreak of World War I, Jeanne's husband Fernand, who was 46, was deemed too old to serve in the military.[1] In fact he was a few months short of the age limit and was indeed mobilised for the duration of the war. This is documented in his military record and was confirmed by Calment in interviews.

Jeanne gave birth to her only child, a daughter named Yvonne Marie Nicolle Calment, on 19 January 1898. Yvonne married army officer Joseph Billot on 3 February 1926, and their only son, Frédéric, was born on 23 December of the same year.[2] According to official records, Yvonne died of pleurisy on 19 January 1934, her 36th birthday,[6][7] after which Calment raised Frédéric, although he lived with his father in the neighbouring apartment.[8] World War II had little effect on Jeanne's life. She said that German soldiers slept in her rooms but "did not take anything away", so that she bore no grudge against them. In 1942, her husband Fernand died, aged 73, reportedly of cherry poisoning.[5] By the 1954 census, she was still registered in the same apartment, together with her son-in-law, retired Colonel Billot, Yvonne's widower; the census documents list Jeanne as "mother" in 1954 and "widow" in 1962. Her grandson Frédéric Billot lived next door with his wife Renée.[2] Her brother François died in 1962, aged 97. Her son-in-law Joseph died in January 1963 from Diabetes, and her grandson Frédéric died in an automobile accident in August of the same year.[1][2]

Identity Switch scenario

Jeanne's daughter Yvonne became ill after she gave birth to her son Freddy in December 1926. In 1928, Yvonne's husband Joseph was granted five years leave from the army due to his wife's poor health and his business interests in Arles. This was confirmed in a note found in his military record. According to Calment, Yvonne was treated in the Savoie region where there was a sanatorium for tuberculosis. By 1929 Yvonne had apparently recovered because she was photographed with Joseph at her brother-in-law's wedding. She was also found in a picture taken at a costume festival in 1930 and again posing on an Alpine balcony in August 1931. in 2019, this last photo was geolocated to a terrace of the Belvedere Hotel in Leysin, Switzerland, but the Hotel was actually a sanatorium where rich clients were treated for tuberculosis.

Jeanne Calment's longevity validators, Jean-Marie Robine and Michel Allard, believed that this confirmed that Yvonne was still afflicted with tuberculosis. Another photo in which Yvonne has exactly the same hairstyle shows her with her mother Jeanne. A reconstruction confirms that this photo could have been taken on the terrace on the same day which means that it is possible that it was Jeanne being treated there. Indeed, Jeanne looks thin compared to other photos taken earlier. She is also looking down on flowers with a wrapped gift on a table, while Yvonne looks healthy but concerned. This may explain why Robine and Allard had misidentified them when they first examined this photo. After visiting Leysin himself, Nikolay Zak tracked down the son of Dr. Gilbert who had been the director at the Belvedere at the time the photos were taken. He was able to confirm that his father had indicated that it was Jeanne who was treated there rather than Yvonne.

What happened in the two and a half years between August 1931 when they were in Leysin and January 1934 when the family held a funeral for Yvonne? If the official story is correct then Jeanne must have recovered while Yvonne relapsed and died. According to Nikolay Zak's switch hypothesis, Jeanne would have died and Yvonne would have assumed her identity. A search for news reports and photographs show that both were unusually quiet during this time. However, archived documents show that Jeanne sold her parent's house and bought a villa in the countryside. Zak obtained copies of these documents which provided new signature samples from 1924, 1931, 1932 and 1933. When compared to previously known examples, these revealed a consistent signature for Jeanne from 1924 until February 1932, but then in 1933 her signature changed significantly. This is very hard to explain unless there had been an identity switch between 1932 and 1933.

It is known that Joseph extended his army leave for five additional years in 1933. It would not be possible to do that on the grounds that his mother-in-law was ill. The identity switch gave him the opportunity to say that his wife was again unwell so that he was granted leave. If Jeanne unexpectedly died, the family would have to maintain the lie to avoid scandalous legal consequences. This provides a more convincing motive for the switch than Zak's earlier inheritance tax avoidance theory.

Raffray En Viager deal

In her later years the news media published reports of how Calment had an income from an en viager deal. In 1965, aged 90 and with no heirs left, Calment signed a life estate contract on her apartment with civil law notary André-François Raffray, selling the property in exchange for a right of occupancy and a monthly revenue of 2,500 francs (€380) until her death. Raffray died on 25 December 1995, by which time Calment had received more than double the apartment's value from him, and his family had to continue making payments. She commented on the situation by saying, "in life, one sometimes makes bad deals".[9] In 1985, she moved into a nursing home, having lived on her own until the age of 110.[1] When interviewed Raffray did not seem perturbed by the situation. He said that he was happy to have helped such a remarkable lady.

Nikolay Zak studied documents relating to the en viager deal and discovered that the real events were more complex. After 1963 when Fredderik Billot died, it was revealed that he had written a codicil to his will requesting that none of hid estate should go to his father or Jeanne Calment. She responded by selling almost all her property to Frédéric's wife Rene Taquw at a low price. She kept only her own apartment but even that was put into an en viager deal with Taque (not Raffray), and the rent she received was less than it should have been. A condition of the deal was that Taque was entitled to buy an annuity in Calment's name to pay the en viager rent. There were rumours that Calment had such an annuity with CNP but this was never confirmed. In 1965 Calment took Taque to court in Tarascon over the deal and won her case. Taque was ordered to increase the payments and return property that she underpaid for. Around 1969 Taque transferred her en viager deal to Raffray. One interpretation of these events is that Rene Taque knew that Calment was younger than she claimed and tried to take advantage of it. When Taque bought the CNP annuity she became complicit herself enabling Calment to take her to court.

If Zak is correct about his identity switch hypothesis, then Yvonne posing as Jeanne benefitted financially from the en viager deal. If her true age had been known she would have received much less than she did. This could not have been a motive for the original switch which happened three decades earlier, but it made it impossible for her to admit her fraud during her last thirty years.

Meeting with Van Gogh

Between 1985 and 1995 Mme Calment was recorded telling journalists a story about how she had met Vincent van Gogh at her husband's drapery store. It was a very popular story that raised her global profile during the centennial of van Gogh's stay in Arles which occurred from February 1888 to April 1889 when Jeanne was 13 and 14 years old. Calment claimed to reporters that she had met van Gogh at that time, introduced to him by her future husband in the shop. She remembered that van Gogh gave her a condescending look, as if unimpressed by her. She described his personality as ugly, ungracious, and "very disagreeable", adding that he "reeked of alcohol". Calment said that she forgave van Gogh for his bad manners.[10][1][11][12] Over the ten years that she retold the story she consistently said that her husband had sold him canvas for his paintings. On two occasions she clarified that she was introduced to van Gogh as Ferdinand's wife. This would not be possible because she was only 15 when he died. Her validators and French journalists tried to fix this error, quoting her as saying that the shop belonged to her future husband, her father, or her uncle. When the story reached the English press it had become so garbled that she was reported as selling him coloured pencils herself. At the age of 114, she briefly appeared in the 1990 fantasy film Vincent and Me, walking outside and answering questions.[13][12]

Oldest documented human

Longevity records

Jeanne Calment was recognised by The Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest living person in 1988 when she was 113.[13] However, the Gerontology Research Group has since then validated the age of Easter Wiggins (1 June 1874 – 7 July 1990), meaning that in reality Calment would have become the world's oldest living person in 1990.[14] However, the case of Wiggins is controversial since no birth record for has been found and early census records are ambiguous. In 1989 Calment lost her title due to the validation of an American Carrie White, only to regain the title in 1991 when White died. Later scrutiny uncovered that White's age was not authentic.

Calment's status further increased when Guinness named her the oldest person ever on 17 October 1995.[3] This was based on her surpassing the now-debunked age claim of Japanese man Shigechiyo Izumi. As a result of Izumi's validation being withdrawn, Calment had already been the oldest person ever since surpassing the age of Easter Wiggins on 30 March 1991. Far exceeding any other verified human lifespan, Calment is widely regarded as the best-documented supercentenarian recorded. For example, she was listed in fourteen census records, beginning in 1876 as a one-year-old infant.[2] After Calment's death, at 122 years and 164 days, then almost 117-year-old Canadian woman Marie-Louise Meilleur became the oldest validated living person. Several claims to have surpassed Calment's age were made, but none have been verified. For about three decades, Calment has held the status of the oldest human being whose age has been validated by modern standards.[15]

Age verification

It should be recognised that longevity validation from these times can be very difficult. Several longevity claims that were at one time accepted as validated by Guinness World Records have since been debunked. These include Marie Laure du Serre-Telmon (d. 1977 .France), Matthew Beard (d. 1985 USA), Shigechiyo Izumi (d 1986 Japan), Carrie White (d 1991, USA), Lucy Hannah (d. 1993 USA), and Johnson Parks (d.1998 USA). The case of Jeanne Calment looks much stronger on paper because of the large number of official documents including her birth certificate that support her claim. However, these documents are also consistent with Zak's identity switch hypothesis requiring only that she faked Yvonne's death certificate and lied on all subsequent documents such as the census returns.

It has been reported that the city of Arles inquired about Calment's personal documents, in order to contribute to the city archives. However, reportedly on Calment's instructions, her documents and family photographs were selectively burned by a distant family member, Josette Bigonnet, a cousin of her grandson. Wikipedia gives the year of these events as 1994, but the story already appeared in Paris Match in 1988.

The verification of her age began in 1995 when she turned 120, and was conducted over a full year. She was asked questions about documented details concerning relatives, and about people and places from her early life, for instance teachers or maids. A great deal of emphasis was put on a series of documents from population censuses, in which Calment was named from 1876 to 1975. The family's membership in the local Catholic bourgeoisie helped researchers find corroborating chains of documentary evidence. Calment's father had been a member of the city council, and her husband owned a large drapery and clothing business. The family lived in two apartments located in the same building as the store, one for Calment, her husband and his mother, one for their daughter Yvonne, her husband and their child. Several house servants were registered in the premises as well.[2]

Popular media reports

Apocryphal media articles reported varying details, some of them unlikely. One report claimed that Calment recalled selling coloured pencils to Vincent van Gogh, reportedly remembering him later as "dirty, badly dressed and disagreeable",[16] and seeing the Eiffel Tower being built.[17] Another wrote that she started fencing in 1960, aged 85.[8] Calment reportedly ascribed her longevity and relatively youthful appearance for her age to a diet rich in olive oil.[11]

Controversy regarding age

Daughter Yvonne Calment in front of the Church of St. Trophime in Arles, 1920. This photograph was often mislabelled as depicting Jeanne at age 22.[note 1]

Demographers have highlighted that Calment's age is an outlier, her lifespan being more than six years longer than the previous record holder, and three years longer than the next oldest people ever documented after her, where the differences are usually by months or weeks.[22] There have been various speculations about the authenticity of her age.[23] In 2018, Russian gerontologist Valery Novoselov prompted mathematician Nikolay Zak to investgate her longevity. Zak found inconsistencies in her validation and revived the hypothesis that Jeanne died in 1934 and her daughter Yvonne, born in 1898, assumed her mother's official identity and was therefore 99 years old when she died in 1997.[24][25] Gerontology blogger Yuri Deigin took up the investigation with a post titled "J'Accuse!", which had gone viral on Medium.[26][27][28] French demographer and epidemiologist Jean-Marie Robine who had been the lead investigator for Calment's validation said that Zak's hypothesis was weak.[29] He claimed that during his research, Calment had correctly answered questions about things that her daughter could not have known first-hand. In fact there were very few examples of this in her recorded interviews. Calment frequently failed to respond to questions about her childhood such as names of friends. Furthermore Yvonne spent 30 years in the company of her mother and so had ample time to learn some facts about Jeanne's youth.[30][31] Robine also dismissed the idea that the residents of Arles could have been duped by the switch.[31][32] Michel Allard, a doctor specialising in geriatrics who had helped verify Calment's records said that the team had considered the identity-switch hypothesis while Calment was still alive because she looked younger than her daughter in photographs, but similar discrepancies in the rates of aging are commonly found in families with centenarian members.[7]

After consulting experts, The Washington Post wrote that "statistically improbable is not the same thing as statistically impossible", that Novoselov and Zak's claims have been dismissed by eight out of nine of the experts, and that those claims are "lacking, if not outright deficient".[33] They quoted Robine as linking Zak's hypothesis to Russian interference in the 2016 US election for which a Washington Post report had won a Pulitzer Prize. Later Robine introduced an alternative conspiracy theory that Zak's work was an elaborate scheme by Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple to obtain Calment's DNA in order to further life-extension research.

In September 2019, Robine, Allard and their colleagues released a paper in The Journals of Gerontology claiming inaccuracies in the Zak et al. paper.[34] In 2023 Zak and Gibbs submitted a counter rebuttal, but the journal refused to accept it. The team presented evidence to support Calment's age – including multiple official documents, census data, and photographic evidence – and also argued that it was indeed statistically possible to reach Calment's age. The authors criticised the advocates of the identity switch hypothesis, and called for a retraction of Zak's article. In February 2020, Zak and Philip Gibbs published an assessment applying Bayes' theorem to the question of her authenticity, noting that, while being subjective, it gave "a 99.99% chance of an identity switch in the case of Mme Calment". François Robin-Champigneul and Robert Young commented on Zak's and Gibbs' findings, with Robin-Champigneul saying that it "appears to be in fact a subjective and nonrigorous analysis", and Young saying that "[i]gnoring the actual facts of the case and stringing together opinions in a 'Bayesian' analysis are to merely misuse a mathematical tool". Young is said to have found that "a very solid case that Jeanne was 122 years has already been made" but that biosampling was still needed to test "for biomarkers of extraordinary longevity". Robin-Champigneul stated that "the hypothesis of an identity swap with her daughter appears not even realistic given the context and the facts, and not supported by evidence".[35][36][37][38][39]

Since Jeanne Calment had 16 distinct great-great-grandparents while her daughter Yvonne had only 12, geneticists have noted that the question of identity could easily be settled by a test for autozygous DNA if a blood or tissue sample were to be made available.[40]

Health and lifestyle

Calment's health presaged her later record. On television she stated "J'ai jamais été malade, jamais, jamais" (Template:Translation).[41] At age 20, incipient cataracts were discovered when she suffered a major episode of conjunctivitis.[5] She married at 21, and her husband's wealth allowed her to live without working. All her life she took care of her skin with olive oil and a puff of powder.[4] At an unspecified time in her youth, she had suffered from migraines.[4] Her husband introduced her to smoking, offering cigarettes[5] after meals, but she did not smoke outside these post-meal occasions.[4] Calment continued smoking in her elderly years until she was 117.[1][4] At "retirement age", she broke her ankle, but before that had never suffered any major injuries.[4] She continued cycling until her hundredth birthday.[5] Around age 100, she fractured her leg, but she recovered quickly and was able to walk again.[4][5]

After her brother, her son-in-law and her grandson died in 1962–63, Calment had no remaining family members. She lived on her own from age 88 until shortly before her 110th birthday, when she decided to move to a nursing home.[2] Her move was precipitated by the winter of 1985 which froze the water pipes in her house (she never used heating in the winter) and caused frostbite to her hands.[5]

Daily routine

After her admission to the Maison du Lac nursing home in January 1985, aged almost 110, Calment initially followed a highly ritualised daily routine. She requested to be awoken at 6:45 a.m., and started the day with a long prayer at her window, thanking God for being alive and for the beautiful day which was starting. She sometimes loudly asked the reason for her longevity and why she was the only one to be still alive in her family. Seated on her armchair, she did gymnastics wearing her stereo headset. Her exercises included flexing and stretching the hands, then the legs. Nurses noted that she moved faster than other residents who were 30 years younger. Her breakfast consisted of coffee with milk and rusks.[42]

She washed herself unassisted with a flannel cloth rather than taking a shower, applying first soap, then olive oil and powder to her face. She washed her own glass and cutlery before proceeding to lunch. She enjoyed daube (braised beef),[43] but was not keen on boiled fish. She had dessert with every meal, and said that given a choice she would eat fried and spicy foods instead of the bland foods on the menu.[44] She made herself daily fruit salads with bananas and oranges. She enjoyed chocolate, sometimes indulging in a kilogram (2.2 lb) per week.[45] After the meal, she smoked a cigarette and drank a small amount of port wine. In the afternoon, she would take a nap for two hours in her armchair, and then visit her neighbours in the care home, telling them about the latest news she had heard on the radio. At nightfall, she would dine quickly, return to her room, listen to music (her poor eyesight preventing her from enjoying her crosswords pastime), smoke a last cigarette and go to bed at 10:00 p.m.[5][4] On Sundays, she went to Mass, and on Fridays she went to Vespers. She regularly prayed to and sought help from God and wondered about the afterlife.[4]

Medical follow-up

Medical student Georges Garoyan published a thesis on Calment when she was 114 years old in January 1990. The first part records her daily routine (as presented above), and the second presents her medical history. She stated that she had been vaccinated as a child but could not remember which vaccine(s). Apart from aspirin against migraines she had never taken any medicine, not even herbal teas. She did not contract German measles, chickenpox, or urinary infections, and was not prone to hypertension or diabetes. In April 1986, aged 111, she was sent to a hospital for heart failure and treated with digoxin. Later she suffered from arthropathy in the ankles, elbows, and wrists, which was successfully treated with anti-inflammatory medication. Her arterial blood pressure was 140mm/70mm, her pulse 84/min. Her height was 150 cm (4 ft 11 in), and her weight 45 kg (99 lb), showing little variation from previous years. She scored well on mental tests, except on numeric tasks and recall of recent events. Analyses of her blood samples were in normal ranges between ages 111–114, with no signs of dehydration, anemia, chronic infection or renal impairment. Genetic analysis of the HLA system revealed the presence of the DR1 allele, common among centenarians. A cardiological assessment revealed a moderate left ventricular hypertrophy with a mild left atrial dilatation and extrasystolic arrhythmia. Radiology revealed diffuse osteoporosis, as well as incipient osteoarthritis in the right hip. An ultrasound exam showed no anomalies of internal organs.[5] At this stage, Calment was still in good health, and continued to walk without a cane.[5] She fell in January 1990 (aged almost 115) and fractured her femur, which required surgery.[2] Subsequently, Calment used a wheelchair,[4] and she abandoned her daily routine.[4]

At the age of 115, Calment attracted the attention of researchers Jean-Marie Robine and Michel Allard, who collaborated with her attending doctor, Victor Lèbre, to interview her, verify her age and identify factors promoting her longevity. According to their year-long analysis, Calment's vision was severely impaired by bilateral cataracts, yet she refused to undergo a routine operation to restore her eyesight; she had a moderately weak heart, a chronic cough, and bouts of rheumatism. On the other hand, her digestion was always good, she slept well, and did not have incontinence. During the last years, she was 137 cm (4 ft 6 in) tall, and weighed 40 kg (88 lb); she confirmed that she had always been small, and had lost weight in recent years. Her eyes were light grey, and her white hair had once been chestnut brown.[4]

Another medical report indicated that pleural sequelae had been observed on her x=rays. There are multiple lung conditions that could have caused this but given the background context it most likely confirms that she had suffered from a tuberculosis infection at some point in her life.

At the age of 118, she was submitted to repeated neurophysiological tests and a CT scan. The tests showed that her verbal memory and language fluency were comparable to those of persons with the same level of education in their eighties and nineties. Frontal brain lobe functions were relatively spared from deterioration, and there was no evidence of progressive neurological disease, depressive symptoms or other functional illness. Her cognitive functioning was observed to improve slightly over the six-month period.[46] Calment reportedly remained "mentally sharp" until the end of her life.[11]

Death

Calment died on 4 August 1997 at around 10:00 a.m. in her nursing home in Arles, France. She was 122 years and 164 days old.[47] French media reported that she died of natural causes,[48][49] though some English-language obituaries did not specify a cause of death.[50][51] The New York Times quoted demographer Jean-Marie Robine as stating that she had been in good health, though almost blind and deaf, as little as a month before her death.[52]

Discography

Extended plays

List of extended plays with selected details

Title	Details
Maîtresse du temps	Released: 21 February 1996 Label: Joseph Format: CD

See also

• Jiroemon Kimura (1897–2013), the oldest man whose age was verified
• List of French supercentenarians
• Maximum life span

Further reading

• Robine, Jean-Marie; Allard, Michel (1999). Jeune, Bernard; Vaupel, James W. (eds.). Jeanne Calment: Validation of the Duration of Her Life. Validation of Exceptional Longevity. Odense University Press. ISBN 978-87-7838-466-9.
• Cavalié, France (1995). Jeanne Calment. L'Oubliée de Dieu [Jeanne Calment. The One Overlooked by God]. Grands témoins [Great Witnesses] (in français). TF1 Éditions/Notre Temps, Paris.

External links

• Template:Cite interview
• Template:Cite AV media
• Template:OL subject