He attended a preparatory academy before entering Beloit College, where he received a classical education in Greek and Latin, while becoming interested in natural science.

In 1868–1869, Chamberlin spent a year taking graduate courses, including geology, at the University of Michigan to strengthen his scientific background.

His geologic mapping work in southeastern Wisconsin, a region mantled with thick glacial deposits, led him to recognize multiple episodes of glaciation during the Pleistocene.

This stood in contrast to what he called the single ruling theory, which encouraged scientists to find supporting data and not challenge it with difficult tests.

[8][9] In 1905, Chamberlin and Forest Ray Moulton developed a theory of the formation of the Solar System that challenged the Laplacian nebular hypothesis.

A portion of the theory stating that smaller objects — planetesimals — gradually collided to build the planets by accretion is still well-regarded.

From his theories and other geological evidence he concluded that Earth was much older than assumed by Lord Kelvin (ca 100 million years) at the time.

[10] In 1909, he and his son Rollin Thomas Chamberlin traveled to the East as members of the Oriental Educational Investigation Commission led by Ernest DeWitt Burton, and supported by John D. Rockefeller to reconnoiter the Eastern world as a potential site for the humanitarian projects of the nascent Rockefeller Foundation.

The Beloit College archives also contain the papers of his son, Rollin T. Chamberlin (1881-1948), who was also a geologist, and later chaired the geology department at the University of Chicago.