Born in Berlin to an observant Jewish Orthodox family, he is the son of Lidi and Wolf, a merchant in the clothing business. At the age of 4, his family emigrated to Holland, and in 1942 they escaped the Nazis, becoming refugees in Switzerland. He was the first in his family to attend university, earning his Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics in 1961 from the technical university of Delft, via heavy ion scattering experiments carried out at the linear accelerator (Hilac) at Berkeley's Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, under the local supervision of Homer Conzett and the supervision at Delft of Aaldert. Wapstra.