He was an accomplished linguist who knew Sanskrit, Icelandic, German, French, Russian, Greek, and Latin.
[1][2] J. M. G. Fell's father was James Pemberton Fell, a colonel in the Canadian Army Corps of Engineers and a real estate developer who helped to lay out the streets of North Vancouver.
In 1940 he returned to Canada and matriculated at the University of British Columbia, graduating there in 1943 at the age of 19.
In 1951 he received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley under John L. Kelley with thesis On L-spaces.
[1] In a sense, it has long been understood that Fell bundles provide an important mechanism for illuminating the structure of C*-dynamical systems and their associated crossed products.