West was educated at the University of Illinois, Urbana, graduating in 1925 and gaining his PhD in 1927. After working initially at Morris Brown College, Atlanta, he moved to Meharry Medical College, Nashville, in 1937. West spent his entire career at Meharry serving as professor of biochemistry from 1938 until his retirement in 1973, apart from a break between 1952 and 1963, when he held the position of college president.

Although West worked in a number of fields and conducted research on the biochemistry of various bacilli, the B vitamins, and antibiotics, he is best known for his studies of the amino acids. In particular it was West who first synthesized the essential amino acid threonine.