Maye Musk

She was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, in 1948, a twin and one of five children, and moved with her family to Pretoria, South Africa, in 1950. Her parents, Joshua and Wyn Haldeman, had a thriving chiropractic practice and a thirst for adventure. In 1952, the couple flew 22,000 miles around the world in a plane Mr. Haldeman brought in pieces from Canada. Every June or July for nearly a decade, the family Haldeman roamed the Kalahari desert in search of its fabled Lost City, retracing the steps of William Leonard Hunt, also known as Guillermo Farini, a Canadian explorer. In 1970, she married Errol Musk, an engineer she had met in high school, and a year later, Elon was born, followed by another son, Kimbal, and a daughter, Tosca. Ms. Musk earned a master’s degree in dietetics from the University of the Orange Free State in South Africa. (And later another in nutritional sciences from the University of Toronto.) The marriage, though, lasted barely nine years, and Ms. Musk left Pretoria for Durban, a coastal town. Elon and Kimbal asked their mother to move to San Francisco in 1996, where they started Zip2, a software company.