Kay attended Rotherham Grammar School and then in 1938 went to the University of Cambridge to read for a degree English.
However, World War II intervened and he enlisted in the Royal Artillery, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel.
In 1946 he returned to Cambridge to complete a degree in Moral Sciences.
He remained at Cambridge in the Nuffield Unit for Research into Problems of Ageing.
[3] His early research interest was experimental work on motor skills[4] and then moved into the more general area of occupational psychology.