AFP, Moscow :
A record held by a Frenchwoman as the world’s longest living person could be fraudulent and involve an identity swap, Russian researchers have claimed in a report that has sparked widespread controversy.
Jeanne Calment died at the age of 122 years and 164 days in 1997, setting a record as the world’s most long-lived person that is still unsurpassed.
The elderly woman used to joke that God must have forgotten about her.
But Russian mathematician Nikolai Zak is not convinced by her story.
In collaboration with gerontologist Valery Novoselov, he spent months analysing biographies of Jeanne Calment as well as her interviews and photos, witness testimony and the public records of the city of Arles in southern France where she lived.
“Analysing all these materials led me to conclude that Jeanne Calment’s daughter Yvonne assumed her mother’s identity,” Zak told AFP.
Zak, a member of the Moscow Society of Naturalists at Moscow State University, recently published his report called “Jeanne Calment: the Secret of Longevity” on ResearchGate, a portal connecting scientists around the world.
While opponents have slammed the report, some scientists have welcomed it and stressed the need for closer checks into longevity records.
Zak suggests that in 1934 it was not Calment’s daughter Yvonne who died of pleurisy, as official records say, but Jeanne Calment herself. Yvonne then took on her mother’s identity in order to avoid paying inheritance tax.
If that is so, the woman who died in 1997 was in fact Yvonne, and she was aged just 99.
The Russian researcher points to discrepancies between physical characteristics listed on Calment’s identity card from the 1930s and her appearance in later years.
