[3] He was initially educated at home, going on to attend Evans' preparatory school at Horris Hill and Winchester College.

In World War I he obtained a commission in the Royal Marine Artillery and was seriously wounded in his shoulder in the Gallipoli campaign.

With Arthur Milne, a comrade during the war, he wrote a seminal work on stellar spectra, temperatures, and pressures.

[1] He became research supervisor to Paul Dirac and, in 1926, worked with him on the statistical mechanics of white dwarf stars.

[6] In 1939, when World War II began, he resumed his work with the Ordnance Board, despite poor health, and was chosen for scientific liaison with Canada and the United States.

Fifteen Fellows of the Royal Society and three Nobel Laureates (Chandrasekhar, Dirac, and Mott) were supervised by Fowler between 1922 and 1939.

At Cambridge he supervised the doctoral studies of 64 students, including John Lennard-Jones, Paul Dirac and Garrett Birkhoff.