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Early life

Hamilton was born in 1936 in Cairo, Egypt, the second of seven children. His parents were from New Zealand; his father A.M. Hamilton was an engineer, and his mother B.M. Hamilton was a physician. The Hamilton family settled in Kent. During the Second World War, Hamilton was evacuated to Edinburgh. He became interested in natural history at an early age and spent his spare time collecting butterflies and other insects. In 1946, he discovered E.B. Ford 's New Naturalist book Butterflies, which introduced him to the principles of evolution by natural selection, genetics, and population genetics.

He was educated at Tonbridge School, where he was in Smythe House. As a 12-year-old, he was seriously injured while playing with explosives his father had that were left over from making hand grenades for the Home Guard during World War II. Hamilton had to have a thoracotomy and parts of fingers on his right hand had to be amputated in King's College Hospital to save his life. He was left with scarring and needed six months to recover.

Before going up to the University of Cambridge, he travelled in France and completed two years of national service. As an undergraduate at St. John's College in Biology, he was uninspired by the "many biologists hardly seemed to believe in evolution".