Chisholm was born in North Attleboro, Massachusetts in 1916. As an undergraduate, he studied philosophy at Brown University where he worked with a number of distinguished philosophers including C. J. Ducasse and R. M. Blake. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1942. At Harvard, Chisholm worked mainly with C. I. Lewis and Donald C. Williams. Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore visited Harvard during Chisholm’s time there and each of them evidently played an important role in Chisholm’s development as a philosopher.