Max Palevsky - Early Life

Early Life

Palevsky was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Izchok (Isadore) Palevsky (born May 10, 1890, in Pinsk, in the Minsk region of the Russian Empire, died September 27, 1969, in Los Angeles), and Sarah Greenblatt (born May 16, 1894, died December 28, 1949, in Chicago). Both were recent immigrants. Izchok had arrived in Baltimore from Bremen, Germany, on the S.S. Brandenburg on March 18, 1910, while Sarah immigrated around 1916. Palevsky's parents spoke Yiddish fluently, but little English. His father, a house painter, did not have a car and had to use the Chicago streetcars to transport his equipment.

The youngest of three children, Palevsky grew up at 1925½ Hancock Street in Chicago. His older brother, Harry (September 16, 1919 — September 17, 1990), was a physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb at Los Alamos National Laboratory; his sister, Helen (born 1920), married Melvin M. Futterman (December 28, 1918 – March 14, 1989).

After graduating from public high school in Chicago, Palevsky volunteered for the US Army Air Corps as a weatherman during World War II and served from 1943 to 1946. For his training he went for a year to the University of Chicago for basic science and mathematics and Yale University for electronics. He was then sent to New Guinea, which was the Air Force's central base for electronics in the South Pacific. After the war, the GI Bill made it financially feasible for Palevsky to earn a B.S. in mathematics and a B.Ph. in philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1948. Palevsky did post-graduate work in philosophy at UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago.