Crawford was born to George Gilmore and Margaret Reed Howard Crawford on August 24, 1869, and raised on a plantation in
Madison, Georgia. He was the second graduate of the
Georgia Institute of Technology; the 1890 graduating class consisted of two people, himself and Henry L. Smith; their graduation order was decided by the flip of a coin. Crawford took a graduate course in chemistry from the
University of Tübingen in
Tübingen,
Baden-Württemberg, Germany from 1891 to 1892. ==Career==