William Charles Price was born on 1 April 1909. He went to the Bishop Gore School in Swansea,  where his contemporaries included the young poet Dylan Thomas, whose father taught English at the school. He failed to get a state scholarship to Oxford in 1927. He gained a BSc in Physics from Swansea University in 1930.
Price then spent three years as a Fellow at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
He was appointed to the University of Cambridge on a 1851 Research Fellowship in 1935, at the universitys Physical Chemical Laboratory  - working with Martin Lowry until 1936, then with Ronald George Wreyford Norrish. In 1937 he became university demonstrator; and from 1938 a Prize Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he worked with John Lennard-Jones and Sydney Chapman. In 1938 he was awarded the Royal Institute of Chemistrys Meldola Medal and Prize.