Preface

The storied realms of exceptional longevity were scrutinized at a research workshop held at Hindsgavl, Denmark, in September 1994. The vast majority of reputed centenarians in the past, and most in most countries even today, lived less than 100 years. On the other hand, the number of genuine longlivers is exploding and a substantial proportion of current newborns in developed countries may survive to celebrate their 100th birthdays. Extremely few of our grandparents endured a century but centenarians may be commonplace among our grandchildren. Research of the caliber presented at the Hindsgavl workshop - melding judicious scepticism and painstaking scholarship with intellectual excitement about the advancing frontier of survival - is warranted.

        The Hindsgavl workshop, which was supported by grants from the Danish Research Councils, the U.S. National Institute on Aging, and the Wellcome Trust, led to this monograph. Most of the chapters are revised versions of papers presented at the workshop. Others, including Wilmoth's impressive analysis of when the first centenarians might have lived and Boldsen's suggestive findings about the very high levels of mortality at older ages in medieval Denmark, were motivated by controversy fanned at the workshop. The first flames of the controversy were sparked by the historical research of the project on the Maximal Length of Life led by Peter Laslett of Trinity College, Cambridge University, and by the incendiary hypothesis of Bernard Jeune that there were no true centenarians before 1800 and no true supercentenarians (110+) before 1950 in any population or period of history.

        Only a fraction of the participants in the workshop are authors of chapters in this monograph; many others made important contributions that are reflected here. In addition to Peter Laslett, Michel Allard, Otto Andersen, Edit Beregi, James Curtsinger, Claudio Franceschi, Bo Hagberg, Shiro Horiuchi, Väinö Kannisto, Niels Keiding, Henning Kirk, J.A. Louhija, Jay Olshansky, Thomas Perls, Karen Ritchie, Jean-Marie Robine, Sven-Mårten Samuelsson, Marianne Schroll, Thorkild Sørensen, Richard Suzman, Andrus Viidik, Frans Willekens, and Anatoli Yashin, among others, helped enrich the discussion of longevity. Exceptional longevity was one topic at the Hindsgavl workshop; other topics included the health characteristics of centenarians, studies of elderly twins, and methods for analyzing data on twins and centenarians: various participants, in addition to those listed above, played active roles in these other sessions. Lise Stark, who with Lis Bluhme helped manage the workshop, produced the typescript for the monograph. Axel Skytthe, Kirill Andreev, Ivan Iachine, and Wang Zhenglian provided technical assistance. A grant from the Danish Research Councils enabled publication. Bernard Jeune and I are responsible for errors.



Professor James W. Vaupel


Updated by V. Castanova,   March 2000