Henry Shine was born in England in 1923 into a working-class family. The field of chemistry as a potential career opened up for him with his appointment as a laboratory assistant, during the war, first at McLean's Pharmaceutical Company in 1940 and then at Pear's (a branch of Lever Brothers) soapworks in 1941. From Pear's and being a part-time, night-school student, he went in October 1942, with a war-time Government's blessing, to be a full-time university student at University College, London, then evacuated to the University College of Wales in Aberystwyth. He obtained a 1st Class Honours B.Sc. degree in 1944 from the bustling department of the Hughes-Ingold pairing. After a short stay with Shell Oil Company he took up research with Professor E. E. Turner on a war-time project at Bedford College, London. He received the Ph.D. degree in late 1947 and went immediately in January, 1948, to Iowa State College for a brief spell of postdoctoral work (with Henry Gilman) and independent research. He joined Carl Niemann at Caltech in the fall, 1949, for postdoctoral research in enzyme kinetics. He became a research chemist with the U.S. Rubber Company in Passaic, NJ in the fall, 1951, and left in the fall, 1954, to become assistant professor of chemistry at Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University). He was chairman of Tech's Department of Chemistry during 1969–1975 and was designated Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Chemistry in 1968. He was an Alexander von Humboldt distinguished senior scientist during 1986–1987. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry and Sigma Xi.