Richard Feynman's parents were Melville Feynman and Lucille Phillips. Melville was born into a Jewish family in Minsk, Belarus, and emigrated with his parents to the United States when he was five years old. He was a business man who tried, not too successfully, many different types of business. It is clear that his talents were not in business but rather in science which was the subject that fascinated him but he never had the opportunity to make a career from it. Lucille Phillips was born in the United States into a Jewish family. Lucille's father had emigrated from Poland and her mother ... came from a family of Polish immigrants. She trained as a primary school teacher but married Melville in 1917 before taking up a profession.