"Landau was the son of a well-to-do Berlin gynecologist (who invented the myomectomy operation)... his mother was from the banking family of Jacoby, and Landau grew up in a Jacoby house amid other Berlin banking families. ...Landau married Marrianne Erlich, daughter of Paul Ehrlich... Ehrlich had been a fellow student with Landau's father. Thus Landau grew up a well-connected and well-to-do person... he was also something of a prodigy. Legend has it that at age three, when his mother forgot her umbrella in a carriage, he replied, "It was number 354," and the umbrella was quickly reacquired. ...Landau was also something of a cynical snob."