Peking Union Medical College
Grant was born at Peking Union Medical College Hospital in Beijing as a Canadian citizen. He lived in China until the age of 15, where his father, John Black Grant, was the first professor of Public Health at the Rockefeller Foundation-funded Peking Union Medical College. Grant attended the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1943 in economics. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen after World War II, and in 1951 graduated from Harvard Law School.