Hamming studied at U Chicago and U Nebraska before obtaining his PhD from U Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From 1946 to 1976 he worked at Bell Telephones. He ended his career as Professor of Computer Science at the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, California. Hamming once wrote ‘The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers’.

http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/alumni/hamming/ Fuller biography and photographs.