High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Isgur was born in South Houston, Texas and finished high school at South Houston High School. He was a scholarship student at Caltech. where his initial interest was in biology, but he moved toward physics and graduated with a B.Sc degree in 1968. Isgur began work on his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, but received his draft notice during his first year there. Denied a draft deferment to continue his education at Berkeley he went to Toronto in order to pursue his graduate studies and to avoid serving in a war he disagreed with on moral and political grounds. Isgur received a letter of introduction from Nobel Laureate Owen Chamberlain at Berkeley, to R.E. Pugh, at the University of Toronto, who took him on as a graduate student. Isgur received a Ph.D. degree in particle theory from Toronto in 1974.