Seyfert was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, then attended Harvard University, starting in 1929.
[1] In 1935 Seyfert married astronomer Muriel Elizabeth Mussels, who was a former Harvard computer who made contributions to the study of ring nebulae.
In 1940 Seyfert went to Mount Wilson Observatory as a fellow with the National Research Council.
The university had only a small observatory, equipped with a 6-inch (150 mm) refractor, and only a modest teaching program.
Seyfert worked diligently to improve the teaching program and to raise funds to build a new observatory.
[3] Carl Seyfert published many papers in the astronomical literature, on a wide variety of topics in stellar and galactic astronomy, as well as on observing methods and instrumentation.
During his time at the Case Institute, he and Jason John Nassau obtained the first good color images of nebulae and stellar spectra.