Born January 30, 1903, in Cambridge, England, Hutchinson was the son of Arthur Hutchinson, a professor of mineralogy at Cambridge University, and Evaline Demeny Shipley Hutchinson, an ardent feminist. He demonstrated an early interest in flora and fauna and a basic understanding of the scientific method. In 1918, at the age of 15, he wrote a letter to the Entomological Record and Journal of Variation about a grasshopper he had seen swimming in a pond. He described an experiment he performed on the insect and included it for taxonomic identification.

In 1924, Hutchinson earned his bachelor's degree in zoology from Emmanuel College at Cambridge University, where he was a founding member of the Biological Tea Club. He then served as an international education fellow at the Stazione Zoologica in Naples from 1925 until 1926, when he was hired as a senior lecturer at the University...