Mikhail Gromov was born on 23 December 1943 in Boksitogorsk, Soviet Union. His father Leonid Gromov was Russian-Slavic and his mother Lea was of Jewish heritage. Both were pathologists.Gromov, Mikhail. "A Few Recollections", in (also available on Gromov's homepage: link) His mother was the cousin of World Chess Champion Mikhail Botvinnik, as well as of the mathematician Isaak Moiseevich Rabinovich.Воспоминания Владимира Рабиновича (генеалогия семьи М. Громова по материнской линии. Лия Александровна Рабинович также приходится двоюродной сестрой известному рижскому математику, историку математики и популяризатору науки Исааку Моисеевичу Рабиновичу (род. 1911), автору книг «Математик Пирс Боль из Риги» (совместно с А. Д. Мышкисом и с приложением комментария М. М. Ботвинника «О шахматной игре П. Г. Боля», 1965), «Строптивая производная» (1968) и др. Троюродный брат М. Громова – известный латвийский адвокат и общественный деятель Александр Жанович Бергман (польск., род. 1925). Gromov was born during World War II, and his mother, who worked as a medical doctor in the Soviet Army, had to leave the front line in order to give birth to him.Newsletter of the European Mathematical Society, No. 73, September 2009, p. 19 When Gromov was nine years old, his mother gave him the book The Enjoyment of Mathematics by Hans Rademacher and Otto Toeplitz, a book that piqued his curiosity and had a great influence on him.
