Nathan Leopold was born on November 19, 1904 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Florence (Foreman) and Nathan Leopold, a wealthy German Jewish immigrant family.[3][4] A child prodigy who claimed to have spoken his first words at the age of four months,[3] he reportedly scored an intelligence quotient of 210,[5] though test results from that era are not directly comparable to scores on modern IQ tests.[6] At the time of the murder he had already completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago with Phi Beta Kappa honors, and planned to begin studies at Harvard Law School after a trip to Europe.[5] He reportedly had studied 15 languages and spoke at least five fluently,[8] and had achieved a measure of national recognition as an ornithologist.[7] He and several other ornithologists identified Kirtland's warbler, an endangered songbird that had not been observed in the Chicago area in over half a century.[9]