[2] Fred Begay was born in Towaoc, Colorado, on the Ute Mountain Indian Reservation.

Fred Begay was only six when his mother and father, both Navajo healers, began teaching him the songs of the Blessingway ceremony.

[3] Begay spoke both Indigenous languages from his mother and father but did not learn English until age 10, when he attended a Bureau of Indian Affairs school in Ignacio, Colorado.

[4] Begay attended the University of New Mexico (UNM), where he earned a bachelor's degree in math and science with honors in 1961.

He was also part of a NASA-funded space physics research team at UNM to conduct fundamental studies on the origin of high energy gamma rays and solar neutrons from 1960-1963 and again from 1965-1972.