French Jeanne Louise Calment, 2

Reportedly, Russian Gerontologist Valery Novoselov, in an interview with the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to extending the human lifespan, expressed concern about the veracity of this data. Officially, it’s said that Jeanne Louise Calment's daughter died in 1934, but both Novoselov and Nikolai Zak, the mathematician who helped analyze the data on supercentenarians for the 2018 study, believe data actually are reversed. They surmise that in reality it was Jeanne Louise who had died, aged almost 59, and that her daughter (Yvonne) assumed her mother’s name and personality. Naturally the question becomes, “Why would a daughter do that?” Well, money may have played a role. (It often seems to be the bottom line in quite a few mysteries.) Yvonne may have assumed her mother's identity after her death in 1934 in order to not have to pay the inheritance tax. So when Jeanne (perhaps alias Yvonne) died in 1997, it may be that this individual was 99 years old and not 122 years 164 days as had been supposedly documented. More tomorrow.