Mackenzie’s family moved to Victoria, British Columbia when he was age 10. He received his Bachelors degree and Masters degree from the University of British Columbia, and began further study at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1937. As a graduate student, Kenneth Ross Mackenzie was involved in the Manhattan Project to help solve how to separate the rare uranium-235 isotope from the identical dominant uranium-238 isotope at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. While working on the Manhattan project, MacKenzie and colleagues borrowed 14,700 tons of silver from the US Treasury and melted it into strands to replace old copper in their magnetic coils. After the war, the silver was melted and returned to the treasury.