George Elmer Forsythe was born on January 8, 1917, in State College, Pennsylvania.

Forsythe's family moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan when George was a young boy.

Forsythe became interested in computing at a young age, experimenting with hand-cranked desk calculators.

Forsythe earned a Bachelor of Science in mathematics at Swarthmore College in 1937, where he was awarded a scholarship.

According to Donald Knuth, Forsythe's greatest contributions were helping to establish computer science as its own academic discipline and starting the field of refereeing and editing algorithms as scholarly work.