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The French woman who died as the world’s oldest may have lied about her age by stealing her mother’s identity to tack on an extra 23 years, a mathematician claims in a blockbuster new report.
Jeanne Calment earned the Guinness World Record when she passed away at age 122 years and 164 days in 1997.
But Russian mathematician Nikolai Zak isn’t convinced that the supposed supercentenarian was who she said she was.
Zak, along with gerontologist Valery Novoselov, spent months scrutinizing Jeanne Calment’s biographies, interviews, photos, witness testimony and public records in the city of Arles in southern France, where she lived.
“Analyzing all these materials led me to conclude that Jeanne Calment’s daughter Yvonne assumed her mother’s identity,” Zak told Agence France-Presse.
Zak recently published his findings, “Jeanne Calment: the Secret of Longevity,” on scientist portal ResearchGate. He dug into the extremely elderly woman’s past after uncovering discrepancies during his research into supercentenarians, or people who have lived beyond age 110.
In his report, Zak says he found “multiple contradictions” in Jeanne Calment’s records and believes Yvonne assumed her mom’s identity after her death “in order to avoid paying inheritance tax.”
Official records say Yvonne died of pleurisy in 1934 — but Zak suggests that it was really her mother, Jeanne, who died then.
If that’s the case, the woman who died in 1997 was really Yvonne — and she was only 99.
Zak, a member of the Moscow Society of Naturalists at Moscow State University, also says there are discrepancies between physical characteristics listed on Jeanne’s identity card from the 1930s and her appearance as an older woman.
The card says her eye and hair color are black and her height is 152 centimeters — around 4 feet 11 inches.
Zak says a doctor who examined the old Jeanne Calment at age 114 found that she was 150 centimeters and that the 2-centimeter (¾-inch) difference wasn’t consistent with age-related loss in height.
Meanwhile, the woman who died in 1997 had light gray eyes and her hair was once chestnut brown.
“The young Yvonne is obviously taller than the old Jeanne,” Zak wrote.
There were other striking details that didn’t add up, according to Novoselov, who heads the gerontology section of the Moscow Society of Naturalists.
“As a doctor I always had doubts about her age,” he said. “The state of her muscle system was different from that of her contemporaries. She could sit up without any support. She had no signs of dementia.”
An autopsy was not performed when Jeanne died, so scientists have not been able to research how and why she allegedly lived so long. She credited her long life to eating chocolate, drinking port and enjoying the occasional cigarette.
Russian researchers say Jeanne ordered her old photos to be burned when she became famous for her age — fueling suspicions about her real identity.
French demographer and gerontologist Jean-Marie Robine, who played a part in authenticating Jeanne’s age for Guinness World Records, slammed the Russian report, saying it “never examines the facts in favor of the authenticity of the longevity of Madame Calment” and “appears to me to be defamatory against her family.”
Robine said he “never had any doubts over the authenticity of the documents” of the woman.
Members of the Calment family didn’t return requests for comment from AFP.
If Jeanne Calment’s record were to be rescinded, the honors would go to American Sarah Knauss, who died at 119 in 1999.
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