He attended DePauw University as an undergraduate, where he gained his first scientific research experience, and from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1938.
from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1939, and later identified the head of its chemistry department, Howard B. Lewis, as a key influence in his research career.
[1][2] He became the head of the Division of Biochemistry and quickly began recruiting faculty interested in biochemistry research, including Gene Brown, Vernon Ingram, Salvador Luria, Paul Schimmel, Phil Robbins and Lisa Steiner (the first woman faculty member in the department, hired in 1967[5]).
He also sought out more senior scientists to bring to MIT, including Cyrus Levinthal, Maurice Fox and Alexander Rich.
Often working in parallel with G. Robert Greenberg, Buchanan's research group made so much progress on this topic that they laid out their findings in a series of over 20 papers published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.