Jeanne Calment

Jeanne Louise Calment(French:[ʒanlwizkalmɑ̃]; 21 February 1875 – 4 August 1997) was a Frenchsupercentenarianand, with a documented lifespan of 122 years and 164 days, theoldest person everwhose age has been verified.Herlongevityattracted media attention and medical studies of her health and lifestyle. She is 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.In January 1988, she was widely reported to be the oldest living person, and in 1995, at age 120, was declared the oldest verified person to have ever lived.
Calment was born on 21 February 1875 inArles,Bouches-du-Rhône,Provence.Some of her close family members also had an above-average lifespan as her older brother, François (1865–1962), lived to the age of 97, her father, Nicolas (1837–1931), who was ashipbuilder, 93, and her mother, Marguerite Gilles (1838–1924), who was from a family ofmillers, 86.
From the age of seven until herFirst Communion, she attended Mrs. Benet's church primary school in Arles, and then the localcollège(secondary school), finishing at 16 with thebrevet classiquediploma. Asked about her daily routine while atprimary 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.
On 8 April 1896, at the age of 21, Jeanne married herdouble second cousin, Fernand Nicolas Calment (1868–1942). Their paternal grandfathers were brothers, and their paternal grandmothers were sisters.He had reportedly started courting her when she was 15, but Jeanne was "too young to be interested in boys".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.Jeanne employed servants and never had to work; she led a leisurely lifestyle within the upper society of Arles, pursuing hobbies such as fencing, cycling, tennis, swimming, rollerskating, playing the piano, and making music with friends.In the summer, the couple would stay atUriagefor mountaineering on the glacier. They also went hunting for rabbits andwild boarsin the hills of Provence, using an "18mm rifle". Calment said she disliked shooting birds.She 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.At the outbreak ofWorld War I, Jeanne's husband Fernand, who was 46, was deemed too old to serve in the military.
Yvonne died ofpleurisyon 19 January 1934, her 36th birthday,after which Calment raised Frédéric, although he lived with his father in the neighbouring apartment.World War IIhad 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 ofcherry poisoning.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.Her brother François died in 1962, aged 97. Her son-in-law Joseph died in January 1963, and her grandson Frédéric died in an automobile accident in August of the same year.
In 1965, aged 90 and with no heirs left, Calment signed alife estatecontract on her apartment withcivil law notaryAndré-François Raffray, selling the property in exchange for a right of occupancy and a monthly revenue of 2,500francs(€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".In 1985, she moved into a nursing home, having lived on her own until age 110.A documentary film about her life, entitledBeyond 120 Years with Jeanne Calment, was released in 1995.In 1996,Time's Mistress, a four-track CD of Jeanne speaking over musical backing tracks in various styles, includingrap, was released.
In 1986, Calment became the oldest living person in France at the age of 111.Her profile increased during the centennial ofVincent van Gogh's move to Arles, which occurred from February 1888 to April 1889 when she 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 her uncle's fabric 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.
She was recognised byThe Guinness Book of Recordsas the world's oldest living person in 1988, when she was 112.However, theGerontology Research Grouphas since then validated the age of Easter Wiggins (1 June 1874 – 7 July 1990), meaning that in reality Calment became the world's oldest living person in 1990.At the age of 114, she briefly appeared in the 1990 fantasy filmVincent and Me, walking outside and answering questions.
Her status further increased whenGuinnessnamed her the oldest person ever on 17 October 1995.This was based on her surpassing the now-debunked age claim of Japanese manShigechiyo 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 reckoned as the best-documented supercentenarian recorded. For example, she was listed in fourteen census records, beginning in 1876 as a one-year-old infant.After Calment's death, at 122 years and 164 days, then almost 117-year-oldCanadianwomanMarie-Louise Meilleurbecame the oldest validated living person. Severalclaims to have surpassed Calment's agewere made, but none have ever been proven. For about three decades, Calment has held the status of the oldest human being whose age has been validated by modern standards.
In 1994, 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. 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 Catholicbourgeoisiehelped 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.
Apocryphalmedia articles reported varying details, some of them unlikely. One report claimed that Calment recalled selling coloured pencils toVincent van Gogh, reportedly remembering him later as "dirty, badly dressed and disagreeable",and seeing theEiffel Towerbeing built.Another wrote that she started fencing in 1960, aged 85.Calment reportedly ascribed her longevity and relatively youthful appearance for her age to a diet rich inolive oil.
Demographers have highlighted that Calment's age is anoutlier, her lifespan being several years longer than the nextoldest people ever documented, where the differences are usually by months or weeks.There have been various speculations about the authenticity of her age.In 2018, Russian gerontologist Valery Novoselov and mathematician Nikolay Zak 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.Around the same time, a series of related posts by gerontology blogger Yuri Deigin, titled "J'Accuse!", hadgone viralonMedium.This hypothesis is considered weak by mainstream longevity experts, such as French gerontologistJean-Marie Robine,who pointed out that during his research, Calment had correctly answered questions about things that her daughter could not have known first-hand.Robine also dismissed the idea that the residents of Arles could have been duped by the switch.Another doctor 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.
After consulting several experts,The Washington Postwrote that "statistically improbable is not the same thing as statistically impossible", that Novoselov and Zak's claims are generally dismissed by the overwhelming majority of experts, and found them "lacking, if not outright deficient".In September 2019, several French scientists released a paper inThe Journals of Gerontologypointing out inaccuracies in the Zak et al. paper.
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 applyingBayes' theoremto 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".
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 forautozygousDNA if a blood or tissue sample were to be made available.
Calment's health presaged her later record. On television she stated "J'ai jamais été malade, jamais, jamais" (transl.I have never been ill, never ever).At age 20, incipientcataractswere discovered when she suffered a major episode ofconjunctivitis.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.At an unspecified time in her youth, she had suffered frommigraines.Her husband introduced her to smoking, offeringcigarettesafter meals, but she did not smoke outside these post-meal occasions.Calment continued smoking in her elderly years until she was 117.At "retirement age", she broke her ankle, but before that had never suffered any major injuries.She continued cycling until her hundredth birthday.Around age 100, she fractured her leg, but she recovered quickly and was able to walk again.
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 anursing home.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 causedfrostbiteto her hands.
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 6:45a.m., and started the day with a long prayer at her window, thankingGodfor 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 andrusks.
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 enjoyeddaube(braised beef),but was not keen onboiled fish. She haddessertwith every meal, and said that given a choice she would eat fried and spicy foods instead of the bland foods on the menu.She made herself dailyfruit saladswith bananas and oranges. She enjoyedchocolate, sometimes indulging in a kilogram (2.2 lb) per week.After the meal, she smoked acigaretteand drank a small amount ofport 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 hercrosswordspastime), smoke a last cigarette and go to bed at 10:00p.m.On Sundays, she went toMass, and on Fridays she went toVespersand regularly prayed to and sought help from God and wondered about the afterlife.
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, 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 contractGerman measles,chickenpox, or urinary infections, and was not prone to hypertension or diabetes. In April 1986, aged 111, she was sent to a hospital forheart failureand treated withdigoxin. Later she suffered fromarthropathyin the ankles, elbows, and wrists, which was successfully treated withanti-inflammatorymedication. 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 innormal rangesbetween ages 111–114, with no signs of dehydration, anemia, chronic infection orrenal impairment. Genetic analysis of theHLA systemrevealed the presence of theDR1 allele, common among centenarians. A cardiological assessment revealed a moderate leftventricularhypertrophy with a mild leftatrialdilatation andextrasystolic arrhythmia. Radiology revealed diffuseosteoporosis, as well as incipientosteoarthritisin the right hip. An ultrasound exam showed no anomalies of internal organs.At this stage, Calment was still in good health, and continued to walk without a cane.She fell in January 1990 (aged almost 115) and fractured herfemur, which required surgery.Subsequently, Calment used a wheelchair,and she abandoned her daily routine.
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 ofrheumatism. On the other hand, her digestion was always good, she slept well, and did not haveincontinence. 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.
At the age of 118, she was submitted to repeated neurophysiological tests and aCT 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 lobefunctions were relatively spared from deterioration, and there was no evidence of progressiveneurological disease, depressive symptoms or other functional illness. Her cognitive functioning was observed to improve slightly over the six-month period.Calment reportedly remained "mentally sharp" until the end of her life.
Calment died of unspecified causeson 4 August 1997 around 10:00a.m. in her nursing home in Arles, France. She was 122 years and 164 days old.The New York Timesquoted Robine as stating that she had been in good health, though almost blind and deaf, as little as a month before her death.