J. Mary Taylor was born on May 30, 1931, in Portland, Oregon, to Kathleen and Arnold L. Taylor. She stopped using her first given name as a child. Kathleen Taylor was an accomplished violinist and taught her daughter to play the violin and piano. Aside from music lessons, Taylor often took long walks outside with her mother, learning about the plants and animals her area, inspiring her love of biology. Taylor was an active competitor in tennis, participating in the prestigious British junior circuit at age 17. Taylor attended Smith College in Northampton in 1948 with the intention studying music. She switched her major to zoology and graduated with her honours thesis is protozoology in 1952. She attended the University of California at Berkeley in 1952 to work under Harold Kirby, receiving a Fulbright Fellowship in 1954 Taylor did her doctoral work at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology on protozoan parasites of Peromyscus mice, and completed it in four years. She graduated with her doctoral degree in mammalogy from the University of California at Berkeley in 1959.
