[1][2] As a young man, Harrington worked at a Seattle aircraft manufacturing plant, then served in the US Marine Corps during World War II.
[3] After the war, Harrington enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley where he earned his BS degree, followed by a PhD in the laboratory of Howard Schachman, where he studied the structure of tobacco mosaic virus.
[1] In 1955, Harrington joined the faculty of Iowa State College as an assistant professor of biophysical chemistry.
[2] After just a year, Harrington left Iowa to join Christian Anfinsen's laboratory at the National Institutes of Health.
His work on myosins helped elucidate how chemical energy in the body is converted the mechanical process of muscle contraction.