Evidence That Jeanne Calment Died in 1934-Not 1997

Abstract

I present a body of data that, I argue, cumulatively casts serious doubt on the validity of Jeanne Calment's accepted world record of human life span. First, I assess the plausibility of the record based on the life spans of other centenarians in the International Database of Longevity (IDL) and critique some arguments put forward previously in support of that plausibility, including the longevity of Calment's ancestors. Second, I review the literature dedicated to Calment and discuss multiple contradictions in her interviews, biographies, photos, and documents. I argue that the evidence from these sources motivates renewed consideration of the previously rejected hypothesis that Jeanne's daughter Yvonne acquired her mother's identity after her death to avoid financial problems and that Jeanne Calment's death was reported as Yvonne's death in 1934. Finally I discuss the importance of reconsidering the principles of validation, due to the possibility of similar problems regarding other exceptionally long-lived people and the mistaken inferences that researchers may draw from flawed datasets. The phenomenon of Jeanne Calment may prove to be an instructive example of the uncertainty of seemingly well-established facts.

Keywords: Jeanne Calment; mortality plateau; supercentenarians; validation.

FIG. 1.

Survival curves of the cohort of Italians (ISTAT) after 105 years, the group of supercentenarians from IDL born before 1876 after 110 years (Jeanne Calment died last), and representative simulated populations with a constant mortality rate. IDL, International Database of Longevity.

FIG. 2.

Survival curves of three groups of ancestors of Jeanne Calment. The shipbuilders and members of their families lived longer than the other ancestors just as the French live longer nowadays than in XIX century.

FIG. 3.

(A) Rare photo of young Yvonne Calment scanned from Simonoff, 1995. Visible feature near the nose tip (circled) could be a fibroma. (B) Photo of Calment at the age of 114, reprinted with permission by Sipa Press. Visible feature near the nose tip (circled) is probably a fibroma. (C) Photo of Calment at the age of 117, reprinted with permission by Sipa Press. The fibroma is no longer present. Was it also removed periodically at earlier ages? See section “Physical appearance.”