Elon Musk was telling the truth about his father not owning an emerald mine, says Walter Isaacson in his book

Writer Walter Isaacson’s biography on Elon Musk has finally been launched and people are curious to know more about the Twitter owner’s life. The biography was much talked about even before its release and several media outlets had reported on some excerpts of the book. Now that the book has been launched, more information about Musk’s life is flooding the internet.

In the biography, Isaacson says that Musk was telling the truth about his father not owning any gold mine in South Africa. The tech mogul has often refuted these rumours and now, Isaacson is also backing him up.

Musk’s father never owned a gold mine, says Isaacson

A long-running rumour once claimed that Elon Musk’s father owned an emerald mine in South Africa and helped fund the billionaire initially. However, Musk has often refuted these claims and has said that these were just rumours. In a tweet in May this year, the billionaire once again tried to put these rumours to rest and said that he ‘didn’t have a happy childhood’ and that his father never supported him financially after high school. Musk’s mom, Maye Musk, also added to her son’s tweet and said that they used to live in a one-bedroom apartment back in 1989.

In January too, Musk had denied the existence of this emerald mine in a tweet. He had said that the whole thing about the ‘fake emerald mine’ was ‘annoying’.

And now, according to a Business Insider report, Isaacson wrote in his book that Errol Musk (Elon Musk’s father) never owned a mine. Hence, the Twitter owner has been telling the truth.

Musk on his childhood

In a long tweet in May this year, Musk said that his childhood wasn’t happy and that he grew up in a household which was a lower-middle income one and was transitioning to an upper-middle class home. He added that he has never inherited anything from ‘anyone’ and wasn’t supported financially by his father with an ’emerald mine’, as rumours suggest.

But that doesn’t mean that Musk’s father gets no credit at all. The Twitter owner also said that his father deserves credits for things that mean ‘more than money’ like teaching him the fundamentals of physics, engineering and construction. He also added that the emerald mine doesn’t even exist and that he and his brother are providing financial support to his dad since he has been ‘bankrupt for 25 years’.

Backing his claims of suffering from financial woes in the beginning, Elon Musk’s mother, Maye Musk, reshared his tweet. She also added that back in 1989, the family lived in a one-bedroom flat in Toronto.