Extraordinary Case

"She was an exceptional case," said Jean-Marc Robine, a longevity expert(gerontologist) with the National Institute of Medical Research. "By chance, she was endowed with (had) an extraordinary genetic makeup."

He said research into her ancestors determined that unusually high proportion of them lived far longer than the norm for their eras, including many in the 17th and 18th centuries who lived into their 70s. Her father died at 94 and her mother at 86.

Robine remarked on her "extraordinary resistance to sickness, stress and depression." "There's nothing exceptional about her lifestyle," he said. "She was not athletic, not a health fanatic – simply interested in everything but not really passionate about anything."

At 21, Jeanne married her cousin, Fernand Calment. The couple had an only daughter, Yvonne, born in 1898, who gave them their only grandson. After she was widowed, Calment lived alone in her apartment in central Aries until the age of 110.

Calment celebrated her birthday every year in the presence of international journalists, but last January, Calment was placed under the guardianship of a local association after being judged incapable of looking after own affairs(недееспособна) and died of "natural causes."

Aries mayor Michel Vauzelle said that the whole town was in mourning for her. "She was the living memory of our town. She gave us comfort and hope with her vitality, her sense of humour, her tenderness. In short, we hoped she could be immortal."

Tiny in physical stature, Calment was a grandmother by 1926, but soon found herself alone after her grandson was killed in a road accident in 1960 at the age of 36.

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