After graduating from the Lawrenceville School, Lampson received his Bachelor's degree in Physics from Harvard University in 1964, and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1967. During the 1960s, Lampson and others were part of Project GENIE at UC Berkeley. In 1965, several Project GENIE members, specifically Lampson and L. Peter Deutsch, developed the Berkeley Timesharing System for Scientific Data Systems' SDS 940 computer.