Richard Edward Taylor was born in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, on November 2, 1929. His father was Clarence Richard Taylor, the son of Scottish-Irish immigrants to Canada, and his mother was the former Delia Alena Brunsdale, the daughter of Norwegian immigrants. Taylor reports that his interest in science was inspired by the presence of military installations in the Medicine Hat area during World War II and by the explosion of the first atomic bombs in August 1945.

Taylor's undergraduate education took place at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, where he earned a B.S. degree in mathematics and physics in 1950 and then a M.S. degree two years later. After receiving his master's degree, Taylor moved to Stanford University. In 1954 Taylor accepted a job at Stanford's High Energy Physics Laboratory, where he began his long involvement in the study of elementary particles.

Taylor's tenure at Stanford was interrupted for three...