Biography | Elon Musk — The Sandstone School on Roper Street Where He Matriculated

People treat Elon Musk as a product of Silicon Valley garages.

The last school that issued him a certificate sits on this Pretoria campus.

Elon Reeve Musk was born in Pretoria on 28 June 1971.

He spent two years at Bryanston High School in Johannesburg, then moved in Grade 10 to Pretoria Boys High School as a day pupil.

The school stands at 251 Roper Street in Brooklyn, at the foot of Waterkloof Kop.

Its main block is the sandstone building opened in 1909, a national monument since the late twentieth century.

The motto cut into the culture of the place is Virtute et Labore — by valour and labour.

Headmaster Malcolm Armstrong ran the school through Musk's years.

William E. Schroder, who succeeded Armstrong in 1990 and later handled old-boy fundraising, recorded that Musk matriculated here in 1988, at seventeen, with distinctions in physical science and computer studies.

Some later summaries slide the leaving year to 1989.

The school's own later statement, and a 2014 East Bay Times timeline built from public records, both give 1988.

He left South Africa for Canada the following year, where his mother was living, and enrolled at Queen's University in Kingston before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania.

The pin is the public school, not a private house in Waterkloof.

The sandstone façade a visitor sees from Roper Street is the same block that faced the day pupils of the late 1980s.

Photo: Pretoria Boys High School façade, Gamtoos, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Portrait: Elon Musk, Duncan Hull, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.