Robert Farquhar was born Robert Greener on September 12, 1932, in
Chicago,
Illinois. His father left when he was six weeks old and his mother remarried when he was thirteen years old, marrying Frank Farquhar. Frank formally adopted Robert when he was in high school, resulting in Robert taking his surname. He attended Yale Elementary School in Chicago before attending
Parker High School. As a child Farquhar became interested in
aviation, often reading about it and building
model airplanes of his own design. Farquhar attended
Wilson Junior College briefly before joining the army in April 1951. He completed basic training at
Fort Knox and
jump training at
Fort Benning before being deployed to
Fort Bragg as part of the
82nd Airborne Division. In late 1952, Farquhar requested to be transferred to a division which was taking part in the
Korean War, being deployed to the
187th Infantry Regiment stationed in Japan. After some training in Japan, Farquhar was invited to attend clerk typist school and became the company clerk, writing reports, for some time. One day, after some North Korean prisoners were released, Farquhar's division was moved to
Kimpo airfield for one month. There, he was on the
front lines until the
ceasefire. Returning to the U.S., Farquhar attended the
University of Illinois Navy Pier campus before moving to the main campus at
Champaign in 1957. There he decided on a career in spaceflight, finishing his
bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering in 1959. He stayed at the University of Illinois for graduate school before applying and being accepted for a position at the
University of California, Los Angeles. During his summer after graduating, Farquhar worked at the
RAND Corporation. He completed his engineering
master's degree at the University of California. Farquhar attended
Stanford University for his
PhD in
astronautics which he obtained in 1968. ==Career==