He was born in Verdal Municipality, and had ten older siblings as well as a twin sister.
He finished his secondary education at Trondheim Cathedral School in 1921, and graduated from the University of Oslo with the cand.real.
He had taken up planktology as a research assistant of Haaken Hasberg Gran at the botanical laboratory, a position he held from 1926 to 1933.
From 1934 to 1936 he was a research fellow of plant physiology; in 1935 he spent some time working with August Krogh in Denmark.
[1] He was honored in 1947, when botanist Georges Victor Deflandre published Braarudosphaera, a type of Algae in Compt.