Molly Markoff, the ultra-longevity blogger and scrap metal sculptor who was believed to be the oldest man in the United States and whose brain was donated for research into so-called super-aging, died at his home in downtown Los Angeles on June 3. He was 110 years old.
Confirming his death, Hansen's daughter, Judith Markoff Hansen, said his father had suffered two strokes in recent weeks.
People who live to be 110 years or older are considered supercentenarians, and the Los Angeles Gerontology Research Group lists more than 150 supercentenarians around the world.
Markoff, who was born in New York City on Jan. 11, 1914, six months before the start of World War I, joined the club this year and is now considered the oldest living man in the United States, following the death of Francis Zoen, a California man who died in January at age 113.
As of April, the world's oldest man is believed to be John Alfred Tinniswood of Britain, who is 111 years old, according to the Guinness World Records. (Guinness also lists Maria Branyas-Morella, a California native who lives in Spain, as the world's oldest woman, at 117 years old.)
When Markoff heard the news that he'd made it to the top of the list, “he just smiled and said, 'Well, somebody's got to be there,'” his daughter said in an interview.
Not only did he live a long life, but he was also famously unusually lucid for his age: until the last months of his life, he pored over the Los Angeles Times every morning, discussed the war in Ukraine and other world events, and posted reports about his life on his blog.
“He believed that if he continued to work he would survive, and he really wanted to live,” Hansen said.
Markov far surpassed the standard that researchers call superagers — people over 80 whose brains appear to rejuvenate by decades — making his brain highly valuable for research, said Tish Hebel, CEO of the Brain Donor Project, a Naples, Florida-based nonprofit that is affiliated with the National Institutes of Health.
“This tissue is sorely needed for neuroscience research,” Hebel said. “One in five of us currently has some kind of neurological disease or disability, many of which develop later in life. Scientists will learn a lot from Markov's tissue about how to stay healthy as we age. This is an incredible gift he has given us.”
Morris Markoff was born in an East Harlem apartment as one of four children to Russian Jewish immigrants Max and Rose Markoff. His father was a cabinet maker and his mother “was a peddler of kitchenware,” Mr. Markoff once said in an interview for his blog.
As a boy, his family of six lived in a 400-square-foot apartment with no closets, hot water, or a toilet (they used a hallway toilet). The apartment was infested with vermin and bedbugs. “Burning the bedsprings was an annual ritual among the apartment residents,” he wrote in his 2017 autobiography, “Keep on Breathing: Memories at 103.”
He survived infection during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic that claimed the life of his older brother. He attended school until the eighth grade, then trained as a mechanic.
Markoff moved to Los Angeles in the late 1930s to work for a vacuum cleaner company. He brought his girlfriend, Betty Goldmintz, with him from New York, and the two were married on November 4, 1938. They were together for 81 years until her death in 2019.
Mr. Markov later took a new job with the company in San Francisco, but was transferred to Los Angeles before World War II. In 1943, he worked as a machinist for a defense contractor making artillery shells. After the war, he and a partner started a series of small-appliance companies in Los Angeles.
A photography enthusiast, Markov discovered his passion for sculpture while repairing a toilet in 1960. When he removed a broken copper float, he noticed it resembled a ballerina's tutu, so he cut the float in half and soldered a screen to it. “Then the dancer did the exercise of lifting one leg,” he wrote in his memoir. “I had created something.” At age 100, he had his first gallery exhibition in Los Angeles.
A few days before his death, when he was no longer insane, his daughter decided to donate his brain for scientific research. Markoff was in favor of organ donation, she said. Hebel said they believe this is the oldest cognitively sound brain ever donated.
Markov credited regular walking to his longevity. He lived to be 103, and he and his wife would often walk three miles a day into their 90s. Their daughter joked that they would hold hands “to stay strong.” Markov ate frugally, rarely drank alcohol and shunned bottled water.
“They believed the bottles were poison,” says Hansen, who called me when public health concerns began to emerge about some of the bottles and said, “J, did you read the paper? We were ahead of our time.”