george e. kimball was born in chicago in 1906 and he grew up in new britain, connecticut. he was the oldest of three children in a middle-class family; his younger brother, penn kimball, also became a professor at columbia, in journalism. his interest in chemistry was due to his high school chemistry teacher. he spent a year at phillips exeter academy and in 1924 he enrolled at princeton university. apparently his father was of the opinion that there were already too many graduates of yale university in connecticut. kimball later claimed that he chose the chemistry program at princeton because it allowed him to study not only chemistry, but also an equal amount of physics and mathematics, which were also of interest to him. kimball received his bachelor's degree in 1928, and at that time his main interest was quantum chemistry, which at that time was a field that was still in its infancy, following significant theoretical breakthroughs in quantum mechanics in 1925.