Mohamed Morsi was born in the Sharqia Governorate, in northern Egypt, of modest provincial origin, in the village of El Adwah, north of Cairo, on 8 August 1951. His father was a farmer and his mother a housewife. He is the eldest of five brothers, and told journalists that he remembers being taken to school on the back of a donkey. In the late 1960s, he moved to Cairo to study at Cairo University, and earned a BA in engineering with high honors in 1975. He fulfilled his military Service in the Egyptian Army from 1975 to 1976, serving in the chemical warfare unit. He then resumed his studies at Cairo University and earned an MS in metallurgical engineering in 1978. After completing his master's degree, Morsi earned a government scholarship that enabled him to study in the United States. He received a PhD in materials science from the University of Southern California in 1982 with his dissertation "High-Temperature Electrical Conductivity and Defect Structure of Donor-Doped Al2O3".