Alexander Imich

Alexander Imich (February 4, 1903 – June 8, 2014) was a Polish-American chemist, parapsychologist, zoologist and writer who was the president of the Anomalous Phenomena Research Center in New York City. He was born in 1903 in Częstochowa, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire) to a Jewish family.

Imich, a supercentenarian, also became the oldest living man at age 111 after the death of 111-year-old Arturo Licata, of Italy, on April 24, 2014. Until his own death a little more than a month later, aged 111 years and 124 days, Imich was certified by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest living man.

Imich was also the last surviving veteran of the Polish-Soviet War.

Early war service Imich stated that, at age 15, he and the rest of his class joined the Polish forces to fight the Bolsheviks in 1918. His older brother reportedly served as an instructor in the automobile division, so Imich learned to drive trucks for the army until the Bolshevik forces were pushed back and Imich returned to school.

Academic career He earned a PhD in zoology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków in 1929,

Alexander Imich was already mentioned in a couple of psychist English-language books and journals as early as 1933 and 1934.

World War II During World War II, Imich and his wife Wela (pronounced Vela) fled to Soviet-occupied Białystok, where he was employed as a chemist. The couple were later interned in a special settlement due to their refusal to accept Soviet citizenship. They were released under the amnesty for Polish citizens in the Soviet Union in September 1941. They chose to emigrate to the U.S. in 1952, as almost all of their Polish relatives and friends were murdered in the Holocaust. In 2012, he began to transfer the records of his research into the paranormal to the University of Manitoba Department of Archives and Special Collections. or shortly before his 111th birthday—with him spending his 111th birthday in the New York City's Roosevelt Hospital. After his release from Roosevelt Hospital, Imich belatedly celebrated his 111th birthday either in late April or early May 2014.

After being the world's oldest living man for approximately six weeks, Alexander Imich died on June 8, 2014, at 9:03 AM from natural causes aged 111. He was succeeded as the world's oldest man by Sakari Momoi of Japan (who was born on February 5, 1903, just one day after Imich). Imich donated his body to Mount Sinai Medical Center for medical research.