After two years of graduate work in electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he returned to Harvard to study physics, earning a Master of Arts (M.A.)
In 1942 he took a leave of absence to do applied mathematics for the United States government during World War II, notably at the Frankford Arsenal.
In 1970, after finishing the second volume of his treatise on the combinatory logic, Curry retired from the University of Amsterdam and returned to State College, Pennsylvania.
"[3] By working in the area of Combinatory Logic for his entire career, Curry essentially became the founder and biggest name in the field.
The power and scope of combinatory logic are quite similar to that of the lambda calculus of Church, and the latter formalism has tended to predominate in recent decades.
In 1947 Curry also described one of the first high-level programming languages and provided the first description of a procedure to convert a general arithmetic expression into a code for one-address computer.
In 1966 he became professor of logic and its history and philosophy of exact sciences at the University of Amsterdam, the successor of Evert Willem Beth.
his 1951 book), following his mentor Hilbert, but his writings betray substantial philosophical curiosity and a very open mind about intuitionistic logic.