 He was the eldest child of George Edward Linfoot, a violinist and mathematician, and George's wife Laura, née Clayton.After attending King Edward VII School he won a scholarship to Balliol College at the University of Oxford.During his time at Oxford he met the number theorist G. H. Hardy, and after graduating in 1926, Linfoot completed a D.Phil under the supervision of Hardy with a thesis entitled "Applications of the Theory of Functions of a Complex Variable".