Categories: Explainers

Elon Musk: A Trailblazer in tech and Education

Early life and Education

Elon Reeve Musk was born in June 28,1971 in Pretoria, South Africa, the oldest of three children. His father was a South African engineer, and his mother was a Canadian model and nutritionist. After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk lived primarily with his father. He would later dub his father “a terrible human being…almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done.” by 10, had taught himself computer programming. In 1989, he moved to Canada to attend Queen’s University to study business.
Musk had a great time at Queen’s. He recalls and learnt a great deal in those first two years.“It was fun and interesting. I’d call them formative years,” he says.
“One thing that I learned at Queen’s, both from faculty and students – was how to work collaboratively with smart people and make use of the Socratic method to achieve commonality of purpose.”Like most youngsters, he saw the US as the “Land of Opportunity” and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania to pursue physics and economics. His final stop was Stanford University’s Department of Physics.Musk’s background and knowledge he received from university ignited ideas he had from many years ago, and he founded PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, and Boring company.

Early Accomplishments

Technology became an escape for Musk. At 10, he became acquainted with programming using a Commodore VIC-20, an early and relatively inexpensive home computer. Before long, Musk had become proficient enough to create Blastar—a video game in the style of Space Invaders. He sold the BASIC code for the game to a PC magazine for $500.

In one telling incident from his childhood, Musk and his brother planned to open a video game arcade near their school. Their parents nixed the plan. Controversial business tycoon and co-founder of six companies Elon Musk is worth US$178.2 billion.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Elon Musk is the charismatic chief executive officer (CEO) of electric car maker Tesla and rocket manufacturer SpaceX.

Following a contested process, Musk completed a deal to buy the company behind Twitter in October 2022, becoming the owner of the social media company.

Born and raised in South Africa, Musk spent time in Canada before moving to the United States.

Educated at the University of Pennsylvania in physics, Musk started getting his feet wet as a serial tech entrepreneur with early successes like Zip2 and X.com, which merged with a company that became PayPal.

Musk has behaved eccentrically from time to time. He has said he has Asperger’s syndrome.

Elon Musk’s net worth was estimated at $176 billion as of April 2023, making him the second wealthiest human on the planet.

Interesting facts about Elon Musk

1. When Musk was 12 years old, he created the video game Blastar. He ended up selling it to a computer magazine in 1984 for $500.

2. Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla in 2003. Musk and his money joined a year later.

3. He almost sold Tesla to Google for $6 billion in 2013.

4. His first cameo was in the 2010 movie Iron Man 2 and he played himself on TV’s The Big Bang Theory.

5. Musk was able to start SpaceX with the $100 million he earned when eBay bought PayPal.
He has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a milder form of autism.

6. Musk’s wealth is based on stocks and his ownership of companies. He takes no salary.
Musk’s son Xavier has a special inspiration for his name: Comic book character Professor Xavier of Marvel’s X-Men.

7. Musk purchased James Bond’s classic submarine car at a London auction in 2013 for close to $1 million.

8. Maye Musk, Elon’s mother, is currently a model.