Robert Sokal was born in 1926 in a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. In 1939, following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, he escaped with his family to China. He earned his bachelor's degree at St. John's College in Shanghai and from there moved with his wife Julie to the University of Chicago, where he also worked as a librarian to complement his scholarship. He took his Ph.D. degree under the supervision of the well-known termite systematist Alfred E. Emerson. He was also strongly influenced by Sewall Wright, who served on his dissertation committee. Sokal developed an interest for statistics and quantitative biology.