[4] After completing gymnasium in June 1918, Hamburger was inducted into the German army, but was released after the Armistice later that year.
The army had discharged him in the city of Breslau, and he began his university studies there, moving to Heidelberg for the academic year of 1919–1920.
[2] Hamburger was doing post-doctoral research at the University of Chicago when the Nazis came to power in Germany, and was able to remain in the US through the assistance of the Rockefeller Foundation.
[2] Hamburger began to work at Washington University in St. Louis in 1935; he retired from his professor position in 1969 and continued researching until the 1980s.
[2] In the 1960s, Hamburger did embryological work that established that chick movements in embryo were spontaneous patterns, a finding that contradicted contemporary assertions of behavioral psychologists.