Economist Joseph Alois Schwnpeter was born at Triesch in Moravia on February 3, 1883. His father was a textile manufacturer and his mother, Joan Marguerite, daughter of Julius Gruener, a physician in Wiener-Neustadt. He was their only child. Nothing more is known for certain about his forbears. His physical appearance, inherited from his father, suggests a mixed ancestry. He once toyed with the idea that the name Schumpeter came from Italy, but he could find no evidence to support it. As far as we know, the Schumpter tree flowered luxuriantly only once. Now it is extinct. His father died when Schumpeter was four years old. The young widow, then only twenty-six married Sigismund von Kebler, lieutenant-general in the Austro-Hungarian army, seven years later. Without doubt, his mother was the most important personal influence in Schumpeter's life. She was handsome, talented and ambitious for her son. His devotion to her continued without diminution or disillusion not only to the end of her life but to the end of his. His career in Egypt was cut short by the onset of Malta fever. He returned to Vienna in 1909 and in the same year accepted a professorship in economics at the University of Czernowitz. Although he found the life of that city to his liking, he considered most of his academic colleagues dull and provincial whatever their merits in their particular fields. His stern self-discipline required him to grade every day for his intellectual performance. The poorer days received a grade of zero and the best, one. And from the daily grades he built up to assessments of the weeks, the months and the years. His standards were such that he hardly ever satisfied himself.