Aston was born in Harbonne, England, on September 1, 1877. His father was a farmer and metal merchant and his mother, the daughter of a gun-maker. He attended Malvern and Mason's Colleges and spent the years between 1903 and 1908 as a research student in physics at Birmingham University.

Between 1910 and 1919, Aston worked with Joseph J. Thomson at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University. This period was interrupted by World War I, during which time Aston served as an engineer at the Royal Aircraft Establishment.

Aston's primary field of research was determined early in his career at the Cavendish. In 1912, Thomson was studying the positive rays produced when electrical current is passed through a gas in a glass ("cathode") tube. The effect had first been observed in 1886 by Eugen Goldstein (1850-1930), who called the rays channel rays. Thomson found that, when neon was used in the tube, a pair of positive (or...