 Grigore, the couple's eleventh child, was intellectually precocious.His mother noticed his aptitude early on, and despite great material difficulties, including selling off their land so he could finish high school, his parents managed to provide him with an education.As argued by historian Lucian Boia, Popa's lowly origin and his successful career stand as evidence of an "upward social mobility" in the pre-1944 Kingdom of Romania.