Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa.
A young Elon Musk, smiling for the camera during his boyhood in South Africa
His mother, Maye Musk, was a Canadian-born model and dietitian, and his father, Errol Musk, was a South African engineer. He grew up with a brother, Kimbal, and a sister, Tosca. His parents divorced when he was young, and Elon spent much of his youth living with his father.
Musk with his mother, Maye Musk, who moved to Canada with her children and supported his early ambitions
As a child, Musk was intensely curious and spent much of his time reading. He taught himself computer programming at around age 10, and at 12 he sold the code for a simple space-themed video game called Blastar to a magazine for about $500. It was an early sign of the mix of technical skill and entrepreneurial drive that would define his career.
School was not easy for him. He has described being bullied severely as a boy, including one attack that landed him in the hospital. He attended Pretoria Boys High School, where he stood out more for his intellect than his social life.
At 17, Musk left South Africa. He has said he wanted to avoid mandatory military service under the apartheid-era government and was drawn to the opportunities of North America. Using his mother’s Canadian citizenship, he moved to Canada in 1989 and enrolled at Queen’s University in Ontario. In 1992 he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned degrees in physics and economics.
Musk during his student days at Queen’s University in Ontario, before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania.
After graduating in 1995, he was admitted to a PhD program in applied physics at Stanford. He left after just a couple of days to pursue the internet boom, and with his brother Kimbal he founded his first company, Zip2. That launched the entrepreneurial path that would lead to PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla.
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