[1] Chorley was born in Minehead, Somerset in an area known as the West Country, with roots in Exmoor and the Vale of Taunton Deane.

He made a transatlantic move in 1951 as a Fulbright Scholar to Columbia University where he was a graduate student in the Geology Department and explored the quantitative approach to land form evolution.

During his career Chorley published few geomorphology studies; among them one about comparative morphometry in 1962 and a review papper dealing with the methods of Strahler and Horton in 1966.

In 1964 was appointed British representative to the Commission on Quantitative Techniques of the International Geographical Union, where he was nominated chairman in 1968.

[3] Cambridge contained a strong group in physical geography with colleagues that encouraged Chorley's ideas.

Chorley produced volumes of scientific papers in physical geography that codified his approach and allowed him to ask new questions about earth surface processes and ways they can be studied.

Chorley's studies ranged into climatology and hydrology where he cooperated with Colorado meteorologist Roger Barry on the text, Atmosphere, Weather and Climate (1968).

The second was by founding an annual series, "Progress in Geography", later converted into two influential quarterly journals, in which changes over the whole discipline could be recorded and assessed.