Nikolay Zak


Nikolay Zak is a Russian mathematician and economist who is currently researching gerontology at the Moscow Society of Naturalists. He is best known for his research and publication of articles skeptical of the claim that Jeanne Calment of France was the oldest person in the world when she died in 1997 at age 122. Zak received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Moscow State University in 2007 and his Master’s in Economics in 2006 from the New Economic School in Moscow.

Career

In 2018 Zak worked with Russian gerontologist Valery Novoselov to publish a theory that Calment died in 1934, and her daughter Yvonne, born in 1898, assumed her mother's official identity and was therefore 99 years old when she died in 1997.
A Russian scientific journal rejected Zak's paper as being too informal, as did the bioRxiv preprint repository, and Zak published it instead on ResearchGate, a social networking site for scientists and researchers.
The theory attracted widespread media attention around 30 December 2018 after postings by gerontology blogger Yuri Deigin went viral. In January 2019, Zak's paper was accepted for publication in the journal Rejuvenation Research. In 2020 he published "A Bayesian Assessment of the Longevity of Jeanne Calment."