Frank Taylor Farmer was born in Bexleyheath, Kent and studied at Eltham College before graduating with a first-class honours degree in electrical engineering from King's College London in 1933. He then continued to the University of Cambridge, where he completed a four-year PhD on radio-wave propagation in the ionosphere, working as part of J. A. Ratcliffe 's research group. He continued researching this topic thereafter at the Marconi Research Centre near Chelmsford, Essex.