Max Born.

Max Born was born on December 11, 1882, in Breslau, Germany. His father, Gustav, was a professor of anatomy at the University of Breslau. His mother, Margarethe, died when Born was four years old. In 1890, his father married Bertha Lipstein. Her love of music probably accounted for Born's becoming an accomplished pianist. Born entered the University of Breslau in 1901, spending his next two summers studying at Heidelberg and Zürich. He studied a wide range of subjects, but his greatest interest lay in the areas of mathematics and physics. In 1904, he entered the University of Göttingen, where he became David Hilbert's private assistant. He also studied special relativity under Hermann Minkowski. Felix Klein was so impressed with Born's seminar paper on the stability of elastic wires that he used it as the topic for a university competition. Born was more interested at the time in relativity and declined to enter a paper. Klein, who was very powerful at the university, obliged Born to submit a paper, which won the competition and became the dissertation that earned Born a Ph.D. in 1907. INSET: Max Born.