 Max Born was born on 11 December 1882 in Breslau, which at the time of Born's birth was part of the Prussian Province of Silesia in the German Empire, to a family of Jewish descent.He was one of two children born to Gustav Born, an anatomist and embryologist, who was a professor of embryology at the University of Breslau, and his wife Margarethe (Gretchen) née Kauffmann, from a Silesian family of industrialists.She died when Max was four years old, on 29 August 1886.