Albert Abraham Michelson (surname pronunciation anglicized as Michael-son) was born December 19, 1852 in Strzelno, Poland into a Jewish family. He moved to the US with his parents in 1855, at the age of 2. He grew up in the mining town s of Murphy’s Camp, California and Virginia City, Nevada, where his father was a merchant. His family was Jewish by birth but non-religious, and Michelson himself was a lifelong agnostic. He spent his high school years in San Francisco in the home of his aunt, Henriette