He was educated at Hastings West Primary School and Napier Boys' High School. Purves' academic strengths showed early for he received prizes for Science in the third form, for Mathematics in the fourth form and for Latin, Mathematics and Science in the lower 6th. He won the Isabella Siteman scholarship which was awarded to the highest ranking Hawkes Bay student who did not make the Scholarship list. The scholarship required Purves to study science or medicine at the University of Otago. In 1926 he travelled to Dunedin to study physics, chemistry and mathematics. He majored in chemistry, earning a BSc in 1928 and an MSc with first-class honours in chemistry in 1931.