Wheeler James North was born January 2, 1922, in San Francisco to Wheeler O. and Florence (Ross) North, and grew up at a mining camp at La Fe in Zacatecas, Mexico, as his father was a mining engineer and his mother was an assay chemist.

While still in college in December 1942, North enlisted in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, which allowed him to complete his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1944.

After training in U.S. Army Officers Candidate School at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Signal Corps and assigned to the Philippines.

After two years working with the U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory in San Diego, North returned to Caltech in September 1948 and completed a second bachelor's degree in biology in 1950.

North undertook postdoctoral work with a National Science Foundation fellowship at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory and Cambridge University in England.

North also studied the ecological effects of warm-water discharges from nuclear power plants on kelp forests, and in the early 1990s North undertook studies to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide using marine biomass and clathrate hydrates.