Michael Luther King, Jr. was born in 1939 in Atlanta, Georgia. Later his name was changed to Martin Luther King, Jr. by his father Martin Luther King, Sr. He had an older sister and a younger brother. His father and his grandfather were both pastors, and King Jr. was involved in church life, even though he had very sceptical thoughts about many Christianity's claims. However, he later concluded that the Bible has "many profound truths which one cannot escape". He attended a public high school and skipped ninth and twelfth grade, so that he went on to college without having formally graduated from high school. He moved to Pennsylvania to study theology at the Crozer Theological Seminary. The focus of his studies were on Mohandas Ghandi. In the seminary, King could experience mixed black and white classes. Then he went on to Boston University, where he first met his wife Coretta Scott. They had four children together. At the age of twenty five, he became Pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. It is assumed that the most important influence on Martin Luther King, Jr. came from Howard Thurman, a classmate of his father, who mentored King Jr. and his friends, and who had met Ghandi during one of his missionary trips.