Supercentenarians Lists and Tables


The following tables describe the validated supercentenarians [*]
as maintained by the The Los Angeles Gerontology Research Group on a world-wide basis.

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* By definition, a Supercentenarian is a validated human being who has attained the age of 110 years or more).

Persons listed in the tables below have reached the age of 110 according to the following criteria:
(1) Tables of authenticated national longevity records or other mentions in the Guinness Book of (World) Records in various editions since 1955. Any Guinness World Records WOP/WOM titleholder or national longevity recordholder from 1955 onward and 110+ is included;
(2) They have been otherwise mentioned (usually in press reports) as having passed muster with the documentation standards of the Guinness Book; or
(3) They have been verified by official records and generally supported by demographic research.

We intentionally omit individuals who did not make it past 109 years of age, since they are much too numerous for us to attempt to list them here.


Background of the Tables:

These tables were created with the help of an international team of researchers including professional demographers, university-based biologists, as well as a few highly dedicated amateurs who have devoted countless hours over the last several years to the largely thankless task of maintaining the tables as accurately as possible. Along the way, many journalists from different parts of the world, who normally write human-interest stories on local celebrities, have assisted us in our contacts with family members who in turn provide official documentation. Nursing home staff in various parts of the country have also been extremely helpful. Note that our contributors work diligently to meet the challenge of numerous pretenders to membership whose documentation is either forged or missing for a variety of reasons. These individuals have been systematically omitted. Furthermore, our Tables are certainly incomplete in that, for the less-developed countries, many individuals, who may have valid claims, have incomplete documentation (like only a family Bible) since official documents never existed in these countries, if and when they began keeping census records at all. Besides Birth Certificates, Baptismal Certificates are also used when available. Also, we may not even know about some of these people, and their families may have no incentive to inform scientists or government officials just because demographers happen to be gratuitously interested in this subject.


Please click on the respective GRG Table's link below to jump directly to that section:

Table A: VERIFIED SUPERCENTENARIANS (listed chronologically by birth date)* New update as of January 1, 2015
Table B: VERIFIED SUPERCENTENARIANS (ranked by age)* New update as of January 1, 2015
Table C: CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORLD'S OLDEST PERSONS (since 1955)* New update as of July 31, 2018
Table D: PROGRESSIVE LIST OF WORLD'S OLDEST PERSON TITLEHOLDERS
Table E: CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF LIVING VERIFIED SUPERCENTENARIANS
Table F: FALSE AND EXAGGERATED CLAIMS
Table G: NUMBER OF VERIFIED SUPERCENTENARIANS BY NATIONS* New update as of January 1, 2015
Table H: EARLIEST VERIFIED SUPERCENTENARIAN BY PLACE-OF-BIRTH* New update as of January 1, 2015
Table I: DECEASED VERIFIED SUPERCENTENARIANS (listed chronologically by death date)
Table J: WORLD'S OLDEST CLAIMANTS
Table K: OLDEST VERIFIED CENTENARIAN BY YEAR
Table L: SUPERCENTENARIAN TABLES BY PLACE-OF-BIRTH
Table M: TABLE OF THE WORLD'S OLDEST MEN (since 1972)* New update as of April 10, 2018
Table N: HIGHEST AGE BY RANK
Table O: VALIDATED 114+ POPULATION TABLE

Legend for the Race (R) Column:

W = White; Color = BLUE
B = Black; Color = BLACK
H = Hispanic; Color = RED
O = Oriental; Color = GREEN


GRG Pending Cases:

GRG Pending Cases, formerly named Table EE, are cases that have potentially at least one document to support their case.

January 2015: Archived link for January 2015
February 2015: February 15, 2015


Acknowledgements:

There are now more than 45 contributors and their associated staff from the following countries: USA, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, and Japan. The list is compiled for publication by Mr. Louis Epstein of New York or Mr. Robert Young of Atlanta, GA with the assistance of Mr. Johnny Adams of Orange County, CA and Mr. Mark Muir of Virginia. A more complete list of contributors is available on the List of International Correspondents located on the GRG website.

Confidentiality Statement:

For reasons of privacy, details of these individuals' supporting documentation are on file either with Messrs. Louis Epstein of New York or Robert Young of Atlanta, GA and could be made available to legitimate demographic researchers upon request. A uniquely important feature of our research protocol is the focus on persons whose age has been thoroughly validated. For a rigorous validation of the age of a Supercentenarian, it is in many instances necessary to work with personal information For example, in some countries the actual name of a person is needed to retrieve and match birth and death certificates. Appropriate procedures and rules will be designed to protect the confidential nature of personal information, taking into account prevailing data and protection laws in different countries. For example, Germany has different laws from France and the UK. Data protection procedures and rules adopted by the GRG and the IDL (International Data Base on Longevity) are governed by the general principle that private data about individual persons should not be possible from the information that will eventually be included in a public database unless it is essential for identification purposes. For example, among these rules is the provision that only specially-trained validation personnel will have access to private personal information (like addresses, phone numbers, names of family members, and so on). This sort of private personal information will not be made available to researchers and other individuals who are external to the validation process and will not be included in any public version of the database.


May 15, 2010; We are working on a new format for Table E based on newer data base technology compared with Microsoft Excel that we hope will permanently replace the current version by June 1st. This Beta Test version was developed by Johnny Adams, our Data Base Administrator, in collaboration with Robert Young, our Senior Data Base Analyst. To see what it looks like, click on New Format Table E. - Steve Coles, System Administrator


Other Comments: The oldest Living American Man, Mr. John McMorran of Florida and Michigan died around 1:00 PM EST on Monday, February 24, 2003 at age 113; his obituary with more details is provided in the News Section under the items for February 25, 2003.
Mrs. Catherine Kral and Adelina Domingues (age 114) have now died.
We have learned from her Great Grandson, Gregory Bech, that Ms. Jessie Hurley of Australia has died. Since our last update in January Mrs. Maud Farris-Luse, the World's Oldest Living Person died of pneumonia on Monday, March 18th, She was 115 years, 56 days. Mr. Leopold Vietoris died on April 9th, and Madam Germaine Haye died on April 18th at age 113. Mrs. Delvina Dahlheimer died on Wednesday, March 13th. She turned 113 last New Year's Eve, and as recently as last month was reported to me to be playing cards a few times a week. Mrs. Nellie Bradley died on Monday, March 11th at age 112 years 180 days. Also, two new members have been added (one male and one female). In December there were a number of new additions canceled by a number of deaths, so the net number of members didn't really change by that much. The most noteworthy death was Mr. Antonio Todde of Tiana, Sardinia, ITALY, formerly the "World's Oldest Living Man" (Mr. Todde passed away peacefully in his sleep on Thursday/Friday morning, January 3rd at the age of 112 just shy of his 113th birthday). Therefore, the "new" oldest living man title now goes to Mr. Yukichi Chuganji of Japan at age 112, who was just official recognized as such by The Guinness Book of Records.
Also, Mrs. Geneva Arlene McNicholl of the USA, born December 10, 1889 in Lafayette, Oregon died on January 22, 2002 at 112 years 43 days.
. [Prior to the previous update, there were eleven deaths (including Mrs. Elsa Moberg of Swede who died on November 27, 2001 at age 112, Mrs. Hanna Eriksson (June 26, 2001); Mrs. Anna Balsiger (September 14, 2001); Mrs. Viola McCague age 113 of Canada and Mrs. Marie-Laure Nadon age 112 also of Canada who died on August 18, 2001, three ladies from Japan: Gozei Taba, Soto Kitagawa, and Hanae Sugiyama), and Mrs. Amy Hulmes of the UK on October 27, 2001; and 12 new additions (four men and eight women [Mrs. Christina Cock of Australia, 113 years old, born Christmas Day 1887; Mrs. Julie Bertrand of Canada; Mrs. Kame Nagayama of Japan; Mrs. Jenny Karlsson of Sweden, and six new 110-year-old validated Japanese persons as of September 11th.]) since our last posting on May 16th]

TABLE A -- VERIFIED SUPERCENTENARIANS (listed chronologically by birth date)

Click for Table A, last updated January 1, 2015.

For historical versions of Table A, please see below:
February 17, 2007
August 9, 2007
January 1, 2014

February 17, 2003; Question for the Editor by Mr. Christian Quast on the seemingly-paradoxical preponderance of Americans in Table A and a reply by Mr. Robert Young of Atlanta, Georgia, which presents a brief history of human longevity studies in general and the demographics of these Tables in particular.

===================NOTES FOR TABLE A==========================

The GRG Tables A-D were originally contributed by Mr. Louis Epstein of New York in 1998, as a list starting with 68 cases. The tables were expanded when Robert Young joined the GRG team in 1999. The current table formats were designed by Robert Young using EXCEL and have been the de facto table versions since 2002. Mr. Miguel Quesada of Spain added auto-update formatting in 2007. Mark Muir joined the GRG team as tech support administrator in 2010, as our table efforts have expanded. Chris Law and Marco Wikkerink joined the GRG as administrative assistants in 2014, with Chris assisting Mark Muir with technical support and Marco assisting Robert Young with data and content.

** For the purposes of this Table, women's Maiden Names (when known) are parenthesized and followed by their married names, regardless of their native homeland practice. The Guinness Book has often used hyphenations particular to different countries.**

There have doubtless been other authenticated 110-year-old claims for countries with higher records. As of now the only countries where such data has been thoroughly surveyed, it seems, are Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK (only for England and Wales). However, with regard to persons migrating between countries no population has been surveyed exhaustively. In Japan and the United States surveys have been attempted that are complete only for recent years.

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In the asterisked (*) cases the precise death dates are believed to have been possibly manufactured as public records only give month of death and the date provided seems assumed. Additional precise dates may be less obviously manufactured... A significant number of the pre-1989 deaths among these do not have exact death dates recorded in the files from which the survey drew.
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TABLE B -- VERIFIED SUPERCENTENARIANS (ranked by age)

RANKED BY CHRONOLOGICAL AGE

Click for Table B, last updated January 1, 2015.

For historical versions of Table B, please see below:
November 22, 2004
February 17, 2007
June 8, 2007
August 13, 2007
October 6, 2009
March 21, 2012
August 11, 2013
January 1, 2014

RANKED BY CHRONOLOGICAL AGE AND BY DECADE OF BIRTH

(The links below have not been updated since around the year 2001.)

Click for period before the 1870s.
(Both the age of the persons listed and the reliability of the data seem lower than on later lists.)

Click for the decade of the 1870s.

Click for the decade of the 1880s.
This list looks older than ever and can still be strengthened by living Supercentenarians on and not yet on it. (Last updated October 5, 2001).

Click for the decade of the 1890s.
It's too early to consider this fourth table complete, since there will be entries filtering in or being revised over the next 20 years or more. Nevertheless, these are the one's we know about so far - 16, from a birth-interval equal to 1 in the 1880s from which only 6 are known, the decade of the1890s being much earlier in its discovery cycle.


TABLE C -- CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORLD'S OLDEST PERSONS (since 1955)
(Listed Since 1955)

July 31, 2018; Click for the latest version of Table C.

For historical versions of Table C, please see below:
February 17, 2007
September 11, 2007
June 2, 2009
June 18, 2011
September 17, 2012
November 15, 2013
April 13, 2015
June 29, 2015
May 13, 2016
August 29, 2017
April 22, 2018


TABLE D -- PROGRESSIVE LIST OF WORLD'S OLDEST PERSON TITLEHOLDERS

(After eventual authentication, not as published initially)

October 15, 2013; Click for the latest version of Table D.


TABLE E -- CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF LIVING VERIFIED SUPERCENTENARIANS

Note: See below for Historical Table E year-by-year data dating from 1975.

As of December 6, 2013, we have 68 Living Supercentenarians on this list (65 Females and 3 Males)

Current GRG Table of Worldwide Validated Living Supercentenarians
Scroll down in Table E for information about Recent Deaths.

June 13, 2012; Click for historical Table E data as of January 1st of the year from 1971 to 2000.

1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000

May 5, 2013; Click for the Deaths from 1996-1997 and 1999-2012.

1996
1997
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012

Some of the tables above were formatted with the help of Mr. Mark E. Muir of Virginia.


TABLE F -- FALSE AND EXAGGERATED CLAIMS

Click for Table F as of October 27, 2009.

This Table is the culmination of many years of demographic research, and we plan to update it periodically (about every six months). The first one was posted on November 27, 2002.

Mr. Robert Young of Atlanta, Georgia writes, "I am now aware that the question of why so many birth-record documents are necessary? is one of the most-often asked by family members of candidate Supercentenarians." This, Table F is provided to help us to answer why such rigorous documentation is needed. It lists more than 40 cases for which the claimed age of the individual was subsequently found to be overstated, while that the actual age turned out to be anywhere from one year less to 30 or more years less than the age claimed! Conversely, there is only one case we currently know of for which the real age turned out to be higher than the claimed age ---- Mrs. Grace Clawson. This suggests that relatives and others pushing a claim tend to err on the side of exaggeration. We have identified several cases of blatant financial self-interest by tourist agencies in small countries who hoped to encourage visitors. Furthermore,

1. Table F reveals that while African-American cases were more likely to be exaggerated, other races, from Caucasian to American Indian to Oriental Asian, are not immune to this tendency to overstate ages. The real problem of exaggeration is that it distorts the data and hides the true oldest individuals, as someone who really is 110 or more is not likely to outlive someone who is 95 but who claims to be 120 years old.

2. It should be noted that, although most exaggerators were still over 90 years old; a majority of them were over 100. Thus, simply judging by one's appearance in a photograph is clearly insufficient, even though, in the more extreme cases, it may have been obvious the person was not close to the age being claimed.


TABLE G -- NUMBER OF VERIFIED SUPERCENTENARIANS BY NATIONS

April 11, 2018; Click for Table G, the Numbers of Supercentenarians as Summarized by Nationality. This table was prepared by Marco Wikkerink of the Netherlands and Waclaw Jan Kroczek of Poland.

For historical versions of Table G, please see below:
June 13, 2007


TABLE H -- EARLIEST VERIFIED SUPERCENTENARIAN BY PLACE-OF-BIRTH

February 17, 2018, A new version of Table H, showing the first Validated Supercentenarian indexed by Country-of-Birth, is now available. This table was prepared by Marco Wikkerink of the Netherlands and Waclaw Jan Kroczek of Poland.

For historical versions of Table H, please see below:
July 24, 2004


TABLE I -- DECEASED VERIFIED SUPERCENTENARIANS (listed chronologically by death date)

April 28, 2007; Table I provided by Robert Young, GRG Chief Claims Investigator of Atlanta, GA. Click for Table I.


TABLE J -- WORLD'S OLDEST CLAIMANTS

December 15, 2007; Mr. Robert Young has now compiled a Table of the 'World's Oldest Claimants' (Table J). The purpose of this particular Table is to demonstrate the wide variety of undocumented claims that come to us from all around the world and what our Table B might look like if we were to lower our scientific standards (our Committee insists on three independent pieces of demographic documentation at least one of which dates back to the time of the claimant's birth) to self-promotional journalistic standards of news-reporting, which obviously focuses on human-interest stories that may or may not be valid but do sell newspapers or consume commercial air time. Indeed, after careful investigation, a good number of these claims have subsequently been demonstrated to be false. Other claims may never reach our standards and shall remain perpetually in limbo. Others may indeed be true and will someday be validated as new evidence comes to light. Click for Table J.


TABLE K -- OLDEST VERIFIED CENTENARIAN BY YEAR

September 25, 2007; Mr. Robert Young has now completed another new Table which contains all the Oldest Validated Centenarians by Year in history from 1685 to the present time. For reference, we will name it Table K.


TABLE L -- SUPERCENTENARIAN TABLES BY PLACE-OF-BIRTH

December 20, 2007; Mr. Robert Young of Atlanta, GA is planning to provide us with full set of Tables (collectively designated Table L) that index Supercentenarians chronologically by place-of-birth. The first 11 National Tables in this series are the following:

Canada
USA
UK
Germany
The Netherlands
France
Italy
Spain
Portugal
Japan
China


TABLE M -- TABLE OF THE WORLD'S OLDEST MEN (since 1972)

April 11, 2018; A new Table M revision of the World's Oldest Men titleholders is now available.

Click for Table M.

For historical versions of Table M, please see below:
June 10, 2002
March 1, 2007
September 19, 2010
April 28, 2015
July 14, 2015
March 14, 2016
January 31, 2018


TABLE N -- HIGHEST AGE BY RANK

July 16, 2012; Click for Table N1, our "Highest Age by Rank" Table for both Overall (1-100) and for Current Living Supercentenarians.

November 29, 2012; Click for Table N2 for our latest and most up-to-date "Highest Age by Rank" Table.

Why are these new N Tables significant?

They are important for several reasons:

1. Every single record below the top 15 positions from 16 to 100 was set just in the last three years. This means these records are not a random phenomenon over the last few decades, looking at the data from a demographic point of view. If it were random, the breaking of records would be scattered and not uniform. Thus, the data strongly supports the idea that the incidence (and prevalence) of longevity is increasing as more and more people are reaching [110 - 112] years.

2. The top 15 position records -- reflecting maximum lifespan -- are not being broken! In other words, the basic longevity curves are being increasingly rectangularized, while the mortality curves are more likely to produce "depth" than "peak ages." That is to say, we are more likely to observe 30 living 112-year-olds at the same time than we are to see just one Supercentenarian live to 117.

Due to what is called the outlier effect, the very highest ranks are more likely to be distorted by a few exceptional cases such as Madame Jeanne Calment of France or Ms. Sarah Knauss of Pennsylvania.

There are three forces pushing our longevity data up from below, and apparently only one force driving it down from above (The Longevity Cliff or what we have chosen to call the "Calment Limit").:

Upward Forces:

1. There is an increase in the base of the pyramid due to an exponential increase in total world population;
2. There is an increase in the middle of the pyramid due to public health measures that increase average life expectancy, such as pediatric vaccines, antibiotics against infection by pathological microorganisms or other parasites, and C-sections for obstetric complications [but this low- hanging fruit has largely been exploited];
3. There is an increase at the top of the pyramid due to better availability of validation data, as birth-record keeping improved substantially in most countries after the year 1900. Thus, the GRG has been able to move claims through our Pending Table EE more quickly.

The Downward Force:

"The Morality Cliff" (or what we have chosen to call "The Calment Limit = 122 +/- 3 years that has remained unchallenged for the last 15 years) fully absorbs all three upward forces providing us with strong evidence that maximum human lifespan will not increase in our lifetimes (unless we were to uncover interventions into the mechanism of the aging process itself, in which case "all bets are off"). We can quarrel about how causes of death written on death certificates have evolved over the last century, but it remains a fact that all individuals die of something or another, while all babies are born young. So we have to conclude that the longevity-determining genes in our DNA for the repair of constant molecular damage in adult tissues secondary to metabolism become defective with time along with "epigenetic drift" that determines the expression of our genes, even among identical twins reared together. Antagonistic pleotropy is a very important genetics concept in which some genes may be good for species continuity but bad for older individuals within that species. So, life is a tradoff and Nature is constantly tinkering with SNP's in our DNA to ensure species non-extinction, not long lifespans without limit for individuals. Speaking figuratively, placing humans in the context of civilization with wild animals in zoos is raising havoc with all of Nature's presuppositions about what She should do next for the sake of maintaining/orchestrating a jungle ecology in the wild.

Most importantly, our latest data obliterate the concept of a "mortality plateau" at extreme ages, which has been suggested by a number of respected gerontologists, epidemiologists, and demographers. For there to be a plateau in mortality rates, the instantaneous mortality rates would have to become constant for each consecutive year past age x, where x = 110 or whatever. To the contrary, our data show that instantaneous mortality rates continue to rise from 50 percent at age 110 to 70 percent and beyond, as supercentenarians achieve the age of 116 yo, and only a few historical outliers prevent these rates from being even higher than they are (at younger ages). How well the current data fit seamlessly with the well-known Gompertz Curve (well established for ages [0-90] over the last 100 years) has yet to be determined.


TABLE O -- VALIDATED 114+ POPULATION TABLE

March 11, 2012; Today, Mr. Robert Young of Atlanta, GA has provided us with a new Excel Spread Sheet listing the numbers of 114 yo Supercentenarians by rank throughout recent history, starting with the year 1987. He has called this table... The 114 Plus Population Table. As you scroll down, it reveals an "ebb and flow" of the 114+ Supercentenarian population since it began emerging in the late 1980's. After what appeared to have been a period of slow growth in the period from [1987 - 1993], the data since then appears to be operating in an oscillating, wave-like pattern. The peak of nine living 114+ year-olds in 2004 was mostly due to a a cluster of 114th birthdays in rapid succession. Conversely, declines in the number were associated with long periods of "no 114 yo birthdays." This suggests that what may appear to be increases and decreases are in fact due to random variation. This pattern of variation resembles ocean waves breaking on the shore: They go in and out, depending on the tides, but operate within a specific range.

[Editor's Note: This Wave Hypothesis is consistent with the notion of "The Calment Limit," a fuzzy upper limit to maximum human lifespan embedded within the human genome even though average life expectancy has gone up systematically in the developed world due to the discoveries of vaccines, antibiotics, and obstetrical/surgical techniques over the last century. The issue of an ostensible plateau in the Gompertz exponential rise (positive slope on semi-log paper) described as a "flattening of the mortality rate around age 90" in the human population has yet to be determined in the coming weeks as we reevaluate our latest data in the light of a significant number of recent deaths occurring unexpectedly at age 114.]


Why did Jeanne Calment Get a Lucky Roll of the Dice?



There has been speculation about how Jeanne Calment could have achieved such a lucky roll of the dice in her longevity-determining genes, the one's that gave her a special Guinness Book of World Records longevity record status in human history. It was incorrectly suggested that her parents were cousins and that that could have had something to do with it. But this speculation turns out to have been incorrect. Her parents were not cousins after all. It was she herself who married a cousin (a paternal cousin Fernand Nicolas Calment [their fathers were brothers]). Therefore, her daughter might have had a longevity benefit from consanguinity, if there were such a thing. We'll never know for sure, since her only Daughter Yvonne died of pneumonia at the age of 36 just as her only child (Son Frederic) died at age 36 of a motorcycle accident.

Data from inbred royal families in Egypt (three generations of intermarriage between siblings demonstrated that consanguinity is actually bad for your general health [mental retardation] which in turn led to civil and religious laws prohibiting incest [marriage between brothers and sisters, parents and children, or uncles/aunts and nieces/nephews]) and European royal families arranged marriages between their children from different countries [for political purposes] rather than from within their own royal families).

All we can say is that Calment won the genetic lottery. And this despite the fact that she was a smoker, which we now know shortens your life expectancy by about 10 years. Imagine how much longer she could have lived if she didn't smoke!