Professor X

"My dream is a world in which man and mutant can live together in peace."

## BIOGRAPHY

Charles Francis Xavier was born in New York City to the wealthy Dr. Brian Xavier, a well-respected nuclear scientist, and Sharon Xavier. The family lives in a very grand mansion estate in Westchester County because of the riches his father's nuclear research has brought them. He later grows up to attend the University of Oxford, where he earns a Professorship in Genetics and other science fields, and goes on to live first in Oxford and then London for a number of years. Crucially, as he enters late adolescence, Xavier inherits the mansion-house he was raised in, enabling him not only to continue to live in it, but also to turn it in to **Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters**, which he begins together with the first of the X-Men.

Brian, his father, dies in an accident when Xavier is still very young, and Brian's science partner Kurt Marko comforts and then marries the grieving Sharon. When Xavier's telepathic mutant powers emerge, he discovers Marko cares only about his mother's money.

A young Charles Xavier. Story by Stan Lee. Art by Jack Kirby, Alex Toth, and Vincent Colletta.

After the wedding, Kurt moves in with the Xaviers, bringing with him his son Cain. Kurt quickly grows neglectful of Sharon, driving her to alcoholism, and abuses both Charles and Cain. Cain takes out his frustrations and insecurities on his stepbrother. Charles uses his telepathic powers to read Cain's mind and explore the extent of his psychological damage, which only leads to Cain becoming more aggressive toward him and the young Xavier feeling Cain's pain firsthand.

Sharon dies soon after, and a fight erupts between Cain and Charles that causes some of Kurt's lab equipment to explode. Mortally wounded, Kurt drags the two children out before dying, and admits he was partly responsible for Brian's death.

With help from his superhuman powers and natural genius, Xavier becomes an excellent student and athlete, though he gives up the latter, believing his powers give him an unfair advantage. Due to his powers, by the time he graduates from high school, Charles loses all of his hair. He graduates with honors at the age of 16 from Bard College.[*volume & issue needed*] In graduate studies, he receives Ph.D.s in Genetics, Biophysics, Psychology, and Anthropology with a two-year residence at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. He also receives an M.D. in Psychiatry while spending several years in London. He is later appointed Adjunct Professor at Columbia University. *Origins of Marvel Comics: X-Men* #1 (2010) presents a different version of events, suggesting a scholarship to the University of Oxford rescued him from his abusive home, after which he "never looked back", suggesting he began his academic career as a very young man at Oxford. His stepbrother is resentful of him.[*volume & issue needed*]

At graduate school, he meets a Scottish girl named Moira Kinross, a fellow genetics student with whom he falls in love. The two agree to get married, but soon, Xavier is drafted into the Korean War. He carves himself a niche as a soldier in search and rescue missions alongside Shadowcat's father, Carmen Pryde, and witnesses Cain's transformation into Juggernaut when he touches a ruby with an inscription on it in an underground temple. During the war, he receives a letter from Moira telling him that she is breaking up with him. He later discovers that Moira married her old boyfriend Joseph MacTaggert, who abuses her.

Deeply depressed when Moira broke off their engagement without explanation, Xavier began traveling around the world as an adventurer after leaving the army. In Cairo, he meets a young girl named Ororo Munroe (later known as Storm), who is a pickpocket, and the Shadow King, a powerful mutant who is posing as Egyptian crime lord Amahl Farouk. Xavier defeats the Shadow King, barely escaping with his life. This encounter leads to Xavier's decision to devote his life to protecting humanity from evil mutants and safeguarding innocent mutants from human oppression.

Xavier visits his friend Daniel Shomron, who runs a clinic for traumatized Holocaust victims in Haifa, Israel. There, he meets a man going by the name of Magnus (who would later become Magneto), a Holocaust survivor who works as a volunteer in the clinic, and Gabrielle Haller, a woman driven into a catatonic coma by the trauma she experienced. Xavier uses his mental powers to break her out of her catatonia and the two fall in love. Xavier and Magneto become good friends, although neither immediately reveals to the other that he is a mutant. The two hold lengthy debates hypothesizing what will happen if humanity is faced with a new super-powered race of humans. While Xavier is optimistic, Magneto's experiences in the Holocaust lead him to believe that humanity will ultimately oppress the new race of humans as they have done with other minorities. The two friends reveal their powers to each other when they fight Nazi Baron Wolfgang von Strucker and his Hydra agents, who kidnap Gabrielle because she knows the location of their secret cache of gold. Magneto attempts to kill Strucker but Xavier stops him. Realizing that his and Xavier's views on mutant-human relations are incompatible, Magneto leaves with the gold. Charles stays in Israel for some time, but he and Gabrielle separate on good terms, neither knowing that she is pregnant with his son, who grows up to become the mutant Legion.

In a strange town near the Himalayas, Xavier encounters an alien calling himself Lucifer, the advance scout for an invasion by his race, and foils his plans. In retaliation, Lucifer drops a huge stone block on Xavier, crippling his legs. After Lucifer leaves, a young woman named Sage hears Xavier's telepathic cries for help and rescues him, bringing him to safety, beginning a long alliance between the two.

In a hospital in India, he is brought to an American nurse, Amelia Voght, who looks after him and, as she sees to his recovery, they fall in love. When he is released from the hospital, the two moved into an apartment in Bombay together. Amelia is troubled to find Charles studying mutation, as she is a mutant and unsettled by it, though she calms when he reveals himself to be a mutant as well. They eventually move to the United States, living on Xavier's family estate. But the night Scott Summers moves into Xavier's mansion, Amelia leaves him, believing Charles would have changed his view and that mutants should lie low. Yet he is recruiting them to what she believes is a lost cause. Charles tries to force her to stay with his mental powers, but immediately ashamed by this, lets her go. She later becomes a disciple of Magneto.

Over the years, Charles makes a name for himself as geneticist and psychologist, apparently renowned enough that the Greys were referred to him when no other expert could help their catatonic daughter, Jean. Xavier trains her in the use of her telekinesis, while inhibiting her telepathic abilities until she matures. Around this time, he also starts working with fellow mutation expert, Karl Lykos, as well as Moira MacTaggert again, who built a mutant research station on Muir Island. Apparently, Charles had gotten over Moira in his travels to the Greek island of Kirinos. Xavier discusses his candidates for recruitment to his personal strike force, the X-Men, with Moira, including those he passes over, which are Kurt Wagner, Piotr Rasputin, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, and Ororo Munroe. Xavier also trains Tessa in order to spy on Sebastian Shaw.

Xavier founded Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, which provides a safe haven for mutants and teaches them to master their abilities. In addition, he seeks to foster mutant-human relations by providing his superhero team, the X-Men, as an example of mutants acting in good faith, as he told FBI agent Fred Duncan. With his inherited fortune, he uses his ancestral mansion at 1407 Graymalkin Lane in Salem Center, Westchester County, New York as a base of operations with technologically advanced facilities, including the Danger Room - later, Fantomex mentions that Xavier is a billionaire with a net worth of $3.5 billion. Presenting the image of a stern teacher, Xavier makes his students endure a rigorous training regime.

Xavier's first five students are Marvel Girl, Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, and Angel, who become the original X-Men. After he completes recruiting the original team of X-Men, he sends them into battle with Magneto.

Throughout most of his time with the team, Xavier uses his telepathic powers to keep in constant contact with his students and provides instructions and advice when needed. In addition, he uses a special machine called Cerebro, which enhances his ability to detect mutants and to allow the team to find new students in need of the school.

Among the obstacles Xavier faces is his old friend, Magneto, who has grown into an advocate of mutant superiority since their last encounter and who believes the only solution to mutant persecution is domination over humanity.