He’s a world-famous genius, being the brains behind PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX, but where did Elon Musk grow up?
Elon Musk was born and grew up in Pretoria, South Africa. He lived in the South African city until just before his eighteenth birthday, when he relocated to Canada.
Read on to learn more about Elon Musks’ fascinating early life.
Boy Genius
Elon Musk was born in 1971 in the segregated, Apartheid city of Pretoria, South Africa. While the city itself may have been experiencing struggle, the Musk family certainly weren’t. Elon’s father was a skilled electromechanical engineer, sailor and pilot, while his mother was a model and dietitian from Canada.
He was the oldest child of three, all born and raised in Pretoria. When he was nine years old, his parents divorced, with Elon opting to live with his father. By all accounts, he regrets this choice massively. In the past, Elon has labelled his father ‘a terrible human being’, for numerous reasons.
Reportedly, Elon Musk’s father, Errol, fathered a baby with his own stepdaughter, some forty years his junior. Elon explained that he believed his father to be truly evil, with claims that he committed every crime imaginable.
When he was younger, Errol had a severe brush with the law, when he shot dead three men who broke into his home. He was acquitted in terms of self-defense, but it’s an indicator of his ability for violence. Elon has also claimed that Errol was abusive as he grew up with him in Pretoria.
Despite all this, Elon Musk would become one of the greatest geniuses the world has ever known. When he was a child, he found great interest in early computing. He began studying computer programming through books and manuals. By age twelve, he was building and selling computer games.
Further struggle would come when Elon was an older child. At school, he was terribly bullied, even going as far as being hospitalized after a particular beating. However, this still didn’t dissuade Elon from his academic lifestyle.
As time went on, Elon began nurturing a desire to leave Pretoria, to study in America. His father was vehemently against the idea, but given their relationship, it wasn’t going to deter the teenage Musk.
To Canada
Elon was lucky enough to have a Canadian mother. This aspect was enough to secure him a Canadian passport, something he used to his advantage. He knew that it would be easier to enter America through Canada than from South Africa.
Before he turned eighteen, in 1989, Elon Musk left South Africa. He immediately sunk deep into academics once again, studying economics and physics. He graduated in 1997, almost ten years after leaving South Africa, with degrees in both subjects.
His next conquest was to pursue a Ph.D at Stanford University, but instead he closed the door on his academic pursuits. He moved to California and began building a company with his brother, Kimbal Musk.
This would ultimately be the start of Elon Musk’s innovative and entrepreneurial career. In 2000, PayPal was created, arguably one of the best payment platforms of all time. As time went on, Elon would turn his attention to the mechanical. He became deeply interested in rockets and electric cars.
You can see a video of one of Elon’s rockets launching into space in 2020.
While people didn’t really associate Elon with Tesla and SpaceX until the late 2010’s, he worked with both companies from the early 2000’s. He was working the entire time to essentially save the human race, to explore space, and to better the world.
His endeavours came as a result of his desire to truly save the world. He wanted to reduce pollution, better technology and find alternate resources. It’s incredible when you think of the upbringing Elon Musk experienced in Pretoria, and the man he became as time went on.