Upon graduating from college, Hammond took a position as a chemist at Rohm and Haas in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After some months on the job he quit to pursue graduate studies at Harvard University, where he received a Masters of Science (M.S.) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.). His thesis, Inhibition of the Polymerization of Allylacetate, was supervised by Paul Doughty Bartlett. Hammond then moved to Los Angeles, California, to study intermolecular compounds at UCLA.
