Richard Laurence Millington Synge was born on 28 October 1914, in Liverpool, England. After growing up in the Cheshire area of England, he attended Winchester College, a private preparatory school, where he won a classics scholarship to attend Trinity College at Cambridge University. After listening to a speech given by the noted biochemist Frederick Gowland Hopkins, however, he decided to forego his education in the classics and instead pursue a degree in biochemistry at Trinity.

Synge undertook graduate studies at the Cambridge Biochemical Laboratory in 1936, receiving his Ph.D. in 1941. His doctoral research concerned the separation of acetyl amino acids. It was at this time that Synge first met Archer Martin, who was engaged in building a mechanism for extracting vitamin E. They began to work together on a separation process, which was delayed when Martin left for a position at the Wool Industries Research Laboratories in Leeds, England. Synge...