At age thirteen he entered Eton, where he studied for five years before he began attending Trinity College, Cambridge, in late 1866. At the latter institution a special boarding arrangement allowed him to dine with the faculty, a privilege that he appreciated and used to his advantage. Two of his tutors became not just friends but his brothers-in-law: Henry Sidgwick, later founder of the British Academy of Sciences, and John Strutt, later the third Lord Rayleigh and Nobel prizewinning physicist. Balfour's lifelong interest in science and technological innovations developed partially through these early friendships.
In summer 1870 Balfour was introduced to May Lyttleton, the sister of Spencer Lyttleton, his college friend. Although Balfour's youth, his career, and his mother's death in 1872 initially prevented him from becoming more intimate with May, by 1875 he apparently intended to propose. In February, however, she contracted typhoid fever and died a few weeks later. Balfour was devastated and remained a bachelor for the rest of his life.
Encouraged by his uncle and mentor, Lord Salisbury, Balfour stood for Parliament in 1874. Balfour notes in Retrospect that he believed a parliamentary career would allow him to fulfill what he saw as his civic duties while leaving him time for the philosophical pursuits he had begun at Cambridge.
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