[4][5] For the academic year 1899–1900, Forbes did not pursue formal education but spent time on the Forbes family's Wyoming cattle ranch, camped in the Bighorn Mountains, worked briefly in a Maine electro-chemical mill, and traveled in the Pacific Coast states until the beginning of summer 1900; during that summer he visited "Switzerland, France, Holland, England, and Scotland.
As an undergraduate student, he joined several clubs, including the Institute of 1770, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the Signet Society, and Delta Phi.
For the academic year 1904–1905, he was a graduate student in zoology, learning rudimentary electrophysiology under the supervision of George Howard Parker.
[8] The two 1915 papers by Forbes and Gregg "were landmarks, because for the first time there was the skilled application of electrical recording to central reflex phenomena.
"[9] In 1920 he, with Catharine Thacher, used the Einthoven string galvanometer to record the first scientific application of an electron-tube amplifier in nerve physiology.
[10][11] Forbes's most influential paper is perhaps The interpretation of spinal reflexes in terms of present knowledge of nerve conduction (1922),[12] which had many suggestions for experimental tests and goals in neurophysiology.
"[14] In the summer of 1923, Forbes worked with Edgar Douglas Adrian at the University of Cambridge and occasionally visited Oxford to consult with Sherrington and to take lessons in piloting an airplane.
[16] (In addition to his scientific papers and his novel Radio Gunner he wrote a literary memoir entitled Quest for a Northern Air Route and several short stories.
The book was published anonymously and gave a fictitious account of a young physicist in an imaginary world war of the future.
In 1946 he was sent on the Operation Crossroads mission to map and measure the waves generated by the atomic bomb explosion on Bikini Atoll.
In the summer of 1931, Forbes, the owner and captain of the 97-foot schooner Ramah, took a crew of sixteen, including a geologist and botanist on a scientific expedition along the coast of Labrador north to Cape Chidley.
[21] Until extreme old age, Forbes engaged in snow skiing, horseback riding, ice skating, sailing, canoeing, kayaking, camping, and flying his private airplane.