The world was graced with the arrival of Elon Musk on June 28, 1971. Pretoria, South Africa is where he entered the world. His parents are Errol Musk, an electromechanical engineer, and Maye Musk, a former model and certified dietitian. He attended private schools throughout his upbringing in South Africa. At the age of ten, he taught himself how to program computers and made his first video game, Blastar, which was set in outer space. To pursue higher education, he emigrated to the United States in 1988. He spent two years studying at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, before going to Penn.
Education
In Pretoria, South Africa, Musk graduated from high school. He graduated from Pretoria Boys High School after spending time there and also attending Bryanston High School and Waterkloof House Preparatory School. He used his Canadian-born mother to apply for a Canadian passport so he could enter the United States more quickly and easily. He spent five months at the University of Pretoria while he waited for his application to be reviewed. He moved in with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year after arriving in Canada in June 1989 and performing odd jobs on farms and in lumber mills. Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario was his destination in 1990. Two years later, he shifted his academic focus to the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), where he earned a BA in physics and a BS in economics from the Wharton School. Despite Musk’s assertions that he received the degrees in 1995, UPenn insists that he really received them in 1997. He allegedly used proceeds from ticketed home parties and a business concept for a Google Books-style book-scanning service to finance his education.
Silicon Valley companies
He completed internships in 1994 at two different Silicon Valley companies: Pinnacle Research Institute, which studied electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, and Rocket Science Games, which developed computer games. The Stanford University Ph.D. program in materials science accepted him in 1995. Musk, though, chose to join the Internet boom, so he dropped out of school only two days after being accepted and apparently never heard back from Netscape about a job.
Musk received his undergraduate education in physics and economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He also developed an interest in business and entrepreneurship, and in 1995 he co-founded Zip2 with his brother, Kimbal Musk. Zip2 supplied newspapers with directories of local businesses and maps. It was acquired by Compaq for over $300 million.
Musk started the online payment startup X.com after selling Zip2. X.com evolved into PayPal, which dramatically altered the internet payment landscape. Musk received $165 million when eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002. Musk invested in and founded several firms in his early career, including SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity, and Neuralink. He has since risen to prominence as a leading business figure.
Early life
In Pretoria, one of South Africa’s capital cities. Musk’s lineage includes both British and Pennsylvania Dutch. Maye Musk (née Haldeman) is his mother; she is a model and dietician originally from Saskatchewan, Canada. The South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, property developer, and half-owner of an emerald mine in Zambia that Elon Musk’s father Errol Musk worked at was also the inspiration for Elon’s many interests and accomplishments. Not far from Lake Tanganyika. Kimbal and Tosca Musk are Musk’s younger siblings.
When Musk was a kid, he came from a rich household. His father, an anti-apartheid Progressive Party councilman in Pretoria, has indicated that his views on the subject have been passed down to his children. His American-born Canadian great-grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, took his family on record-breaking trips to Africa and Australia aboard a Bellanca single-engine plane. Musk primarily resided with his father following his parents’ 1980 divorce. Musk has grown distant from his father as a result of his action, which he now deeply regrets. Both his half-sister and half-brother come from his father’s side.
He “was shy and awkward at school” and “didn’t have many friends”, according to his mother, Maye Musk. He had an interest in computers and video games when he was ten years old and taught himself to code using the VIC-20 handbook. He made around $500 selling his BASIC game Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine when he was just twelve years old.
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