Vitalik Buterin was born in Russia in 1994 to computer scientist Dmitry Buterin and Natalia Ameline. He was raised in Kolomna, Moscow Oblast, until he emigrated to Toronto Canada with his family. Placed into a gifted class in the third grade, he shined in a number of subjects including math, programming, and economics; in one story, he is said to have added three digit numbers in his head twice as fast as the average1.