Robert Sanderson Mulliken was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1896. His father was Samuel Parsons Mulliken, a professor of organic chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Through his father, Robert Mulliken made an important professional contact early in his life. Arthur A. Noyes, later to become one of the world's leading physical chemists, was also a resident of Newburyport and a faculty member at MIT. While still in high school, the young Robert proofread galleys of his father's textbooks, books that were later to become standards in the field and make the elder Mulliken famous.

There seemed little doubt that Mulliken would follow his father to MIT and major in chemistry. He graduated with a bachelor of science in that field in 1917, just as the United States was entering World War I. Instead of going on to graduate school, therefore, he took a job in war-related research...