Mohamed Atta
Atta was born in 1968 in a small town in Egypt's Nile Delta. He was 10 years old when he moved with his family to the Abdeen section of Cairo. Atta studied architecture at Cairo University, graduating in 1990, and continued his studies in Germany at the Hamburg University of Technology. In Hamburg, Atta became involved with the al-Quds Mosque, where he met Marwan al-Shehhi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Ziad Jarrah, together forming the Hamburg cell. Atta disappeared from Germany for periods of time, spending some time in Afghanistan, including several months in late 1999 and early 2000 when he met Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda leaders. Atta and the other Hamburg cell members were recruited by bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for the "planes operation" in the United States. Atta returned to Hamburg in February 2000, and began inquiring about flight training in the United States.
Mohamed Morsi
Mohamed Morsi was born in the Sharqia Governorate, in northern Egypt, of modest provincial origin, in the village of El Adwah, north of Cairo, on 8 August 1951. His father was a farmer and his mother a housewife. He is the eldest of five brothers, and told journalists that he remembers being taken to school on the back of a donkey. In the late 1960s, he moved to Cairo to study at Cairo University, and earned a BA in engineering with high honors in 1975. He fulfilled his military service in the Egyptian Army from 1975 to 1976, serving in the chemical warfare unit. He then resumed his studies at Cairo University and earned an MS in metallurgical engineering in 1978. After completing his master's degree, Morsi earned a government scholarship that enabled him to study in the United States. He received a PhD in materials science from the University of Southern California in 1982 with his dissertation