Jeanne Louise Calment - 1875 - 1997

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Calment was born in Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône, Provence, on 21 February 1875.[1] Her father, Nicolas Calment (8 November 1837 – 28 January 1931), was a shipbuilder, and her mother, Marguerite Gilles (20 February 1838 – 18 September 1924), was from a family of millers. She had an older brother, François (25 April 1865 – 1 December 1962). Some of her close family members also lived an above-average lifespan: her brother lived to the age of 97, her father to 93, and her mother to 86.[2]

From the age of seven until her first communion, she attended Mrs Benet's church primary school in Arles, and then the local collège (secondary school), finishing at 16 with the brevet classique diploma (O-level). 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.[6]:27–32

Personal life

Calment in 1895
On 8 April 1896, at the age of 21, she 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 she was "too young to be interested in boys".[7]:4–21 Fernand was heir to a drapery business located in a classic Provençal-style building in the center of Arles, and the couple moved into a spacious apartment above the family store.[2] 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 ("I fell flat on my face"), playing the piano and making music with friends.[7]:4–21 In the summer, the couple would stay at Uriage for mountaineering on the glacier. ("Even at 16 I had good legs.") They also went hunting for rabbits and wild boars in the hills of Provence, using an "18mm rifle". Calment said she disliked shooting birds.[7]:4–21 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.[2]

Yvonne Calment died of pleurisy on 19 January 1934, her 36th birthday,[8][9] after which Jeanne raised Frédéric, although he lived with his father in the neighbouring apartment.[10] 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.[7]:4–21 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. 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, and her grandson Frédéric died in an automobile accident in August of the same year.[1][2]

In 1965, aged 90 and with no heirs left, Calment signed a life estate contract on her apartment with notary public 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 in 1995, by which time Calment had received more than double the apartment's value from him, and his family had to continue making payments. Calment commented on the situation by saying, "in life, one sometimes makes bad deals."[11] In 1985, she moved into a nursing home, having lived on her own until age 110.[1] A documentary film about her life, entitled Beyond 120 Years with Jeanne Calment, was released in 1995.[12] In 1996, Time's Mistress, a four-track CD of Calment speaking over a background of rap, was released.[13]

Oldest human ever documented
Longevity records
In 1986 Jeanne Calment became the oldest living person in France at the age of 111.[14] 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 shop. She remembered the meeting as a disappointment, and described him as ugly and "very disagreeable", adding that he "reeked of alcohol".[1][15][16] She was recognised by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest living person when she was 112.[17] At the age of 114, she briefly appeared in the 1990 documentary film Vincent and Me, walking outside and answering questions.[17] Her profile further increased when Guinness named her the oldest person ever in 1995.[3] Far exceeding any other verified human lifespan, Calment was widely reckoned the best-documented supercentenarian ever 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, 116-year-old Marie-Louise Meilleur became the oldest validated living person. Several claims to have surpassed Calment's age were made, but no such case was proven. For over two decades, Calment has held the status of the oldest-ever human being whose age was validated by modern standards.[18]

Age verification
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.[19] 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 Van Gogh, and seeing the Eiffel Tower being built.[20] Another wrote that she started fencing in 1960, aged 85.[10] Calment reportedly ascribed her longevity and relatively youthful appearance for her age to a diet rich in olive oil.[15] She is also said to have credited her calmness, saying, "That's why they call me Calment."[21]

Skepticism regarding age

Daughter Yvonne Calment in front of the Church of St. Trophime in Arles, date unknown. This photograph was often mislabeled as depicting Jeanne aged 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).[27] Over the course of time there have been various theories brought forward about the authenticity of her age, mainly by Russian authors.[28] In 2018, Russian gerontologist Valery Novoselov and mathematician Nikolay Zak revived the theory that Calment 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.[19] A Russian scientific journal rejected Zak's paper as being too informal, as did the bioRxiv preprint repository, and Zak published it instead on ResearchGate, a social networking site for scientists and researchers.[5] The theory attracted widespread media attention around 30 December 2018 after postings by gerontology blogger Yuri Deigin went viral.[29][30][31][32] In January 2019, Zak's paper was accepted for publication in the journal Rejuvenation Research.[4]

Jean-Marie 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.[33][34] Robine also dismissed the idea that the residents of Arles could have been duped by the switch.[34][35] Michel Allard, the second doctor who helped verify Calment's records, said that the team had considered the identity switch theory while Jeanne 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.[9] Allard and Robine also pointed out the existence of numerous documents relating to Calment's activities throughout her life, and that the Russians brought no evidence forward to support their hypothesis.[9]

After a meeting of the National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED) in Paris on 23 January 2019, French, Swiss, and Belgian longevity experts concluded that none of the Russian claimants provided any proof of an identity substitution, and they also announced that further research would be launched.[36] The Washington Post, after consulting several experts, noted that "statistically improbable is not the same thing as statistically impossible". The Russian claims are generally dismissed by the overwhelming majority of scientists, finding the Russian paper to be "lacking, if not outright deficient."[5] 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 point out 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.[37]