Jeanne Calment

In 1986, Calment became the oldest living person in France at the age of 111.[12] Her profile increased during the centennial of Vincent van Gogh's move to Arles, which occurred from February 1888 to April 1889 when she was 13–14 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 the meeting as a disappointment, and described him as ugly and "very disagreeable", adding that he "reeked of alcohol".[1][13][14]

She was recognised by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest living person when she was 112.[15] She lost this title in 1990 when Carrie C. White of United States claimed to have been born in 1874. White's claim was disputed and later debunked, and after White's death in 1991, she regained the title of the world's oldest living person.[3] At the age of 114, she briefly appeared in the 1990 fantasy film Vincent and Me, walking outside and answering questions.[15]

Her status further increased when Guinness named her the oldest person ever on 17 October 1995.[3] 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.[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 has 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.[16]

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 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]

Apocryphal media articles reported varying details, some of them unlikely. One report claimed that Calment recalled selling coloured pencils to Van Gogh, 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.[13]

Daughter Yvonne Calment in front of the Church of St. Trophime in Arles, date unknown. 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 several years longer than the next oldest people ever documented, where the differences are usually by months or even weeks.[22] There have been various speculations about the authenticity of her age.[23] 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;[24] however, Zak had difficulty getting published. A Russian scientific journal found his paper too informal, as did the bioRxiv preprint repository, which led Zak to choose ResearchGate, a social networking site for scientists and researchers.[25] The paper was accepted for publication in January 2019 in the peer-reviewed journal Rejuvenation Research,[26] a month after a series of related posts by gerontology blogger Yuri Deigin, titled "J'Accuse!", had gone viral on Medium.[27][28][29] This hypothesis is considered weak by mainstream longevity experts, such as French gerontologist Jean-Marie Robine.[30]

Robine, a French gerontologist and one of two validators of Calment, dismissed the claims and pointed out that, during his research, Calment had correctly answered questions about things that her daughter could not have known first-hand.[31][32] Robine also dismissed the idea that the residents of Arles could have been duped by the switch.[32][33] Michel Allard, the second doctor who 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] Allard and Robine also mentioned the existence of numerous documents relating to Calment's activities throughout her life, and that Novoselov and Zak brought no evidence forward to support their hypothesis.[7]

After a meeting of the National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED) in Paris on 23 January 2019, French, Swiss, and Belgian longevity experts commented that Novoselov and Zak had not provided any proof of an identity substitution, and they also announced that further research would be launched.[34] After consulting several experts, The Washington Post wrote 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".[25] In September 2019, several French scientists, including Robine and Allard, released a paper in The Journals of Gerontology where they contest the various claims made by Zak and his colleagues and mention various inaccuracies in the 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.[35]

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".[36] 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 said to have found that "a very solid case that Jeanne was 122 years has already been made" but that biosampling still was 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".[37][38][25]

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 extending 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.

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), 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.[4]^: 85–92 She made herself daily fruit salads with bananas and oranges. She enjoyed chocolate, sometimes indulging in a kilogram (2.2 lb) per week.[40] 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]^: 4–21[4]^: 85–92 On Sundays, she went to Mass, and on Fridays she went to Vespers and regularly prayed to and sought help from God and wondered about the afterlife.[4]^{: 107–112}

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 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]^: 22–42 At this stage, Calment was still in good health, and continued to walk without a cane.[5]^: 22–42 She fell in January 1990 (aged almost 115) and fractured her femur, which required surgery.[2] Subsequently, Calment used a wheelchair,[4]^: 1–13 and she abandoned her daily routine.[4]^: 85–92

At the age of 115, Calment attracted the attention of researchers Jean-Marie Robine and Dr. Michel Allard, who collaborated with her attending doctor, Dr. 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]^: 1–13

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.[41] Calment reportedly remained "mentally sharp" until the end of her life.[13]