Waclaw Jan Kroczek, DMD

Waclaw Jan Kroczek, DMD is a Polish scientist and social activist; known for his research on longevity. Administrator and Correspondent for Poland and the Nordic Countries at the Gerontology Research Group. He is the Founder of the World Supercentenarian Forum and a Bureaucrat at the Gerontology Wiki.

In 2013, he became the Polish correspondent of Gerontology Research Group, an international nonprofit scientific organization dealing with biogerontology and human longevity. The primary goal of this institution is gerontology research to delay the aging process of organisms. It also deals with the age authentication of the oldest people in the world, including supercentenarians.

Between 2015 and 2018, he was the administrative assistant, and in 2018 he became one of the administrators of this scientific institution. His interests include the population of semi-super-centenarians in Poland who are between 105 and 109 years old, aspects of senior care, social policy, and the socioeconomic situation of older people.

In 2016, he won the first prize in a public health session held at the Gdańsk 24th International Student Scientific Conference, for his work The emergence of supercentenarians in Poland and the study of human longevity.

He participated in conferences organized by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Copenhagen, Denmark (2015), Tallinn, Estonia (2016), Rostock, Germany, (2017), and Paris, France (2019).

Jan proved the existence of the population of supercentenarians, people over 110 years of age, in modern Poland. By 2023, he described 30 such cases. He visited and interviewed thirteen supercentenarians in Poland, including Aleksandra Dranka of Harklowa (1903–2014), Irena Smialowska of Legionowo (1908–2019), Stanislaw Kowalski of Swidnica [Pol. Świdnica] (1910–2022), Jadwiga Żak-Stewart of Łódź (1912-present), Irena Siła-Nowicka of Warsaw (1913–2023), and Anna Gawłowska of Czerwionka-Leszczyny (1913-present).

In cooperation with the closest family and through the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Lwów, he reached the original birth record of Tekla Juniewicz, proving her status as the oldest Polish woman in modern history and the first who crossed the barrier of 112 and 113 years in Polish history.

From 2014 until 2015, he participated in an international scientific team’s travel to Verbania, Piedmont, Italy, where they met and interviewed several times the oldest living European at the time and the last surviving person in the world born before 1900, Emma Morano (1899–2017).

In 2017, he traveled to Sprockhoevel, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, where he twice met and interviewed Mathilde Mange (1906–2019), who later became the first German woman to reach the age of 113. He lectured at the University of the Third Age. He is a regular columnist for Gazeta Senior, a nationwide magazine devoted to the social issues of the elderly.

In 2018, he took part in a competition organized by the MEP Jerzy Buzek “(Un)ordinary women – unusual stories. Silesian women on the 100th anniversary of independence”, in which he focused on Stefania Zacharska (1906–2016), a well-deserved teacher from Tarnowskie Góry, who lived to 109 years and was also one of the oldest Polish women. Based on his experience, he hypothesized that the secret to longevity, which supercentenarians state independently of each other, is, among others, the resistance to stress, optimism, strong family ties, and Scandinavian moderation, the golden mean.

Jan also cooperated with Guinness World Records to validate two candidates for the title of World’s Oldest Man from Poland: Alexander Imich of New York, USA (1903–2014) and Israel Kristal of Haifa, Israel (1903–2017). Due to the discovery of sufficiently strong evidence from the archives that meet modern age validation standards, compiled in the monograph “Supercentenarians” by the Belgian demographer Dr. Michel Poulain, the Guinness World Records officially recognized both (Alexander Imich in 2014, Israel Kristal in 2016) as the oldest living men in the world in their time. He appeared many times in various domestic and foreign media in connection with important events and reports from the niche of longevity.

In 2020, Jan authored and coauthored three chapters in the newly published monograph by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research entitled Exceptional Lifespans. Read Centenarians, Semi-supercentenarians and the Emergence of Supercentenarians in Poland, Validation of 113-Year Old Israel Kristal as the World’s Oldest Man, and Age 115+ in the USA: An Update.

On April 14, 2021, Jan visited Stanislaw Kowalski on his 111th birthday, the first man in Poland who turned 110 years of age, becoming the first male supercentenarian in Poland. On June 10, 2022, he visited Tekla Juniewicz on her 116th birthday — the first validated 116-year-old supercentenarian living north of the 50th parallel.

On January 23, 2023, Jan founded the World Supercentenarian Forum, a new community intended to be a welcoming and inclusive place for discussions on healthy senility, human longevity, and the world’s oldest people, while respecting scientific integrity, ethics, and principles.

In August of 2023, Jan took the role of the GRG Correspondent for the Nordic Countries, including Denmark, its autonomous regions, the Faroe Islands and Greenland, Sweden, and Norway.

In 2019, Jan ran for the Polish Parliamentary election, starting from the Left and finishing 4th on the list in the 29th Electoral District (Gliwice), receiving 2175 votes. Earlier on, he supported the new political project of Spring, a center-left and pro-European party led by Robert Biedroń, the first openly LGBT member of the Polish parliament.

Jan is an activist for Women and LGBT rights in Poland and contributed to preventing the LGBT-free zones and preventing the verdict of the Constitutional Court, which withdrew Polish women from the right to a safe termination of pregnancy in the event of severe and irreversible damage to the fetus.

He supports the extension of the offer of dental medical services from the National Health Fund so that they do not become the domain of exclusive goods, but are generally available and financed from the state budget of basic medical services.

In September 2023, he was announced as a candidate in the 2023 Polish Parliamentary election on behalf of the Third Way electoral committee. In the election, he received 1483 votes, including 645 in his hometown of Tarnowskie Góry. In February 2024, he was elected as a candidate for city council and mayor of Tarnowskie Góry from the same committee for the 2024 Polish Local election.

Jan earned his DMD from the Medical University of Silesia – Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry in Zabrze in 2015.

He was invited to be Speaker at the Longevity Summit Dublin 2024.

Visit his LinkedIn profile, Wiki Page, and ResearchGate. Follow him on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter.