He was born on July 10, 1898, at Glenmont, the Edison home in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey. He attended The Haverford School in Haverford, Pennsylvania, and later the Montclair Academy in Montclair, New Jersey, from which he graduated in 1916. Theodore ended his education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned a physics degree in 1923 and remained there another year to pursue graduate studies.