 As a teenager with a home chemistry set, Bynum became interested in the ultimate nature of the universe, an interest that was reinforced by a high school chemistry teacher who taught "the new chemistry" of the 1950s, and also by an English teacher who assigned philosophical writing exercises to her students.After high school, Bynum studied chemistry at the University of Delaware (1959 to 1963), where, in 1961, philosopher Bernard Baumrin created the Delaware Seminars in Philosophy of Science  featuring lectures by world-famous philosophers of science, such as Carl Hempel, Adolph Grunbaum, and Ernest Nagel.Impressed by the Delaware Seminars, Bynum added philosophy as a second field of study, and Baumrin became his logic teacher and mentor.