Elon Musk

Family Roots

Elon Musk’s family provided a clear precedent for his life of taking risks. His maternal grandfather Joshua Norman Haldeman thought Canada’s character was declining so he relocated his family and chiropractic practice from Canada to South Africa.

Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. From a young age, he was brilliant and different, with a tremendous ability to visualize and a photographic memory. He read compulsively, going through every book in his local and school libraries, as well as two sets of encyclopedias. Around the time Musk was 9 or 10, his parents’ marriage fell apart. After their divorce, Musk lived with his mother, Maye, for two years, and then he chose to live with his father, Errol. Musk’s father was generous, taking young Elon and his brother Kimbal on trips and giving them books and computers. An engineer, he showed them how to do plumbing, wiring and brickwork. Emotionally cold and controlling, he made the lives of the boys and their sister Tosca miserable.

Young Musk

Reserved, intellectual and geeky, Elon Musk was an outsider in a South African culture that celebrated masculine toughness. In high school, a group of boys...