Morsi is the eldest of five brothers. He recalled being taken to school on the back of a donkey. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in engineering from Cairo University in 1975 and 1978. He then received his Ph. D. in materials science from the University of Southern California in the U.S. His doctoral thesis was titled “High-Temperature Electrical Conductivity and Defect Structure of Donor-Doped. He was an assistant Professor at California State University. In 1985, he returned to Egypt to become the head of the engineering department at Zagazig University, where he was a professor until 2010.
Morsi was first elected to parliament in 2000. He served as a Member of Parliament from 2000 to 2005 as an independent candidate because the Brotherhood was technically barred from ruining candidates for office under Mubarak. He was a member of the Guidance Office of the Muslim Brotherhood until the founding of the Freedom and Justice Party in 2011, at which point he was elected by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Guidance Office to be the first president of the new party. Morsi was arrested several times under Hosni Mubarak’s regime for various protests. He spent seven month behind bars in 2006, and was detained for a brief period in 2011, along with several other Brotherhood leaders.
Morsi was sworn in on June 30, 2012, as Egypt’s first democratically elected president. He