PARIS ¨C Two French scientists who validated Jeanne Calment¡¯s status as the oldest person ever to have lived, have dismissed claims by Russian researchers who say that she didn¡¯t really survive to 122.
Mathematician Nikolay Zak and gerontologist Valery Novoselov claim that Calment¡¯s daughter, Yvonne Calment, assumed her mother¡¯s identity decades earlier.
The Russians analyzed photographs, official documents and interviews to produce a body of evidence they acknowledge is circumstantial. Gerentology is the scientific study of old age.
Jean-Marie Robine, one of the two French scientists who validated Calment¡¯s age, told France Inter radio late on Wednesday that the stir being caused in France by the Russians¡¯ findings was a ¡°ridiculous controversy.
A spokesman for Guinness World Records, which registered Calment¡¯s age as a world record, said they were aware of the Russians¡¯ claims.
¡°Extensive research is performed for every oldest person record title we verify, which is led by experts in the gerontology field and they have been notified of the current situation,¡± a spokesman said.
In a paper for the Moscow Center For Continuous Mathematical Education, Zak cites discrepancies between the color of Jeanne Calment¡¯s eyes, her height and the shape of her forehead in a copy of a 1930s identity card and in her appearance later in life.
¡°I do not have cast-iron proof,¡± Zak told Reuters on a snow-blanketed street in Moscow. ¡°I reviewed the whole situation. There are lots of small pieces of evidence.¡±
The second French scientist who validated Calment¡¯s age, gerontologist Michel Allard, acknowledged that even if far-fetched, the Russians¡¯ conclusions should be given consideration, although he rejected their suggestions of discrepancies between early images of Calment and her appearance in later life.
¡°In the last years of Jeanne Calment¡¯s life, I saw so many transformations of her physiognomy,¡± he told France Inter.
Jeanne Calment was born on Feb 21, 1875, more than a decade before the Eiffel Tower was built and a year before Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone.
She married a distant wealthy cousin and outlived her daughter, Yvonne ¡ª who died of pneumonia in the early 1930s according to official documents ¡ª her husband and a grandson before passing away in Arles, southern France, on Aug 4, 1997.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.