How can I assign the head of a linked list to a pointer in Linux kernel?

I am writing a program for the Linux kernel to implement a linked list and add the date of births of some people. After they are added I need to find the max age and delete that node.

To find the node with max age, I intend to set a pointer to the first element of the linked list and compare the ages as I iterate through it. I can't figure out how to set the max pointer to the head of the linked list.

I have tried a couple of different things including:

• struct birthday * max = &birthday_list
• struct birthday max = birthday_list
• max = birthday_list.next;

Error I get: error: assignment from incompatible pointer type [-Werror=incompatible-pointer-types]

I think I might be assigning a list to a different structure. Can I get some clarification on what I might be doing wrong?

#include<linux/list.h>
#include<linux/init.h>
#include<linux/kernel.h>
#include<linux/module.h>
#include<linux/types.h>
#include<linux/slab.h>

struct birthday {
    int day;
    int month;
    int year;
    struct list_head list;
}

static LIST_HEAD(birthday_list);
static void remove_oldest_student(void){
struct birthday *max, *curr, *next;
//point max to list head
max = LIST_HEAD(birthday_list);

list_for_each_entry(curr, &birthday_list, list){

  //find_max(&max, &curr);
}

    printk(KERN_INFO "Oldest Student Details --> Name: %s, Month: %d, Day: %d, Year: %d\n",max->name, max->month,max->day,max->year);
}


int simple_init(void) {
    struct birthday *ptr;
    int i;
    for(i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
        // create 5 birthday structs and add them to the list

        struct birthday *person;
        person = kmalloc(sizeof(*person), GFP_KERNEL);
        person->day = 22;
        person->month = 11;
        person->year = 1981;
        INIT_LIST_HEAD(&person->list);

        list_add_tail(&person->list, &birthday_list);
    }

    list_for_each_entry(ptr, &birthday_list, list) {
        // print the info from the structs to the log
        printk(KERN_INFO "%d, %d %d", ptr->month, ptr->day, ptr->year);
     }
remove_oldest_student();
    return 0;
    }


void simple_exit(void) {
    struct birthday *ptr, *next;
    list_for_each_entry_safe(ptr, next, &birthday_list, list) {
        // delete structs and return memory
        list_del(&ptr->list);
        kfree(ptr);
    }
}

module_init(simple_init);
module_exit(simple_exit);