He was awarded an A.B. in Chemistry by Princeton University in 1959 and, after serving as a fleet officer in the U.S. Navy from 1959 to 1962, gained a Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of California at Berkeley on magnetic resonance. He then did postdoc research at the University of California at Santa Barbara on optical spectroscopy before moving in 1968 to become Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh.