Charles Thomas Bolton was born in 1943 at Camp Forrest, a World War II military base in Tennessee, United States. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1966 from the University of Illinois and his master’s (1968) and doctoral degrees (1970) from the University of Michigan. From 1970 to 1972, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the David Dunlap Observatory of the University of Toronto astronomy department. He also taught at the David Dunlap Observatory from 1970 to 1972, at Scarborough College from 1971 to 1972, and at Erindale College from 1972 to 1973. He then became a professor in the astronomy department at the University of Toronto in 1973, and has remained there ever since.