Alexander Imich, a Polish-born psychic researcher who was certified the oldest man on earth, has at a senior residence in Manhattan. He had turned 111 on Feb. 4.
His death was reported by a grandniece, Karen Bogen, in Rhode Island, and a longtime friend in New York, Michael Mannion, who had visited him Saturday night at the Esplanade, the senior home at West End Avenue and 74th Street where Mr. Imich had been living since 1986 unit his death Sunday morning.
Mr. Imich became the world’s oldest validated male supercentenarian (those over 110), according to the Gerontology Research Group of Torrance, Calif., when the previous record-holder, Arturo Licata of Italy, died on April 24 at 111 years and 357 days. At the time, 66 women were officially older than Mr. Imich, with the oldest being 116.
Mr. Imich had willed his body to Mount Sinai Medical Center for study, Mr. Mannion said.
In an interview with The New York Times on April 30, Mr. Imich made light of his longevity record, saying, “Not like it’s the Nobel Prize.”
“I never thought I’d be that old,” he said.
He attributed his long life to the fact that he and his wife, Wela, a painter and therapist who died in 1986, never had children. (In addition to Ms. Bogen, he is survived by an 84-year-old nephew, Jan Imich, in London.) He also exercised, ate sparingly and never drank alcohol.
He said “the aeroplane” was the greatest invention he witnessed in his lifetime; he was born 10 months before the flight of the Wright Brothers.
Mr. Imich was born into a well-to-do secular Jewish family on Feb. 4, 1903, in Czestochowa in southern Poland, a city known for its famous painting of the Black Madonna. His father owned a decorating business.
Young Alex was thwarted in an early desire to become a captain in the Polish Navy, which he laid to anti-Semitism. He turned to zoology and was also stymied, so he switched to chemistry.
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