Blumberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, into a Jewish family, the son of Ida (Simonoff) and Meyer Blumberg, a lawyer. He first attended the Orthodox Yeshivah of Flatbush for elementary school, where–in addition to all regular school subjects–he learned to read and write in Hebrew, and to study the Bible and Jewish texts in their original language. (That school also had among its students a contemporary of Blumberg, Eric Kandel, who is another recipient of the Nobel Prize in medicine.) Blumberg then attended Brooklyn's James Madison High School, a school that Blumberg described as having high academic standards, including many teachers with Ph.D.s.Early life and school – Baruch Blumberg: Physician, Web of Stories. Accessed November 25, 2015. After moving to Far Rockaway, Queens, he transferred to Far Rockaway High School in the early 1940s, a school that also produced fellow laureates Burton Richter and Richard Feynman.Schwach, Howard. "Museum Tracks Down FRHS Nobel Laureates" , The Wave (newspaper), April 15, 2005. Accessed October 2, 2007. "Burton Richter graduated from Far Rockaway High School in 1948." Blumberg served as a U.S. Navy deck officer during World War II. He then attended Union College in Schenectady, New York, and graduated from there with honors in 1946.
