He was born in Paris, France, on August 21, 1923, to Colombian parents, Francisco Laserna Bravo and Elena Pinzón Castillo, and was raised first in Colombia where he attended the Instituto La Salle and then from 1931 to 1932 in Queens in NYC. He graduated from the Gimnasio Moderno in 1940 and went on to study Law for three years at Our Lady of the Rosary University to later change his career and move to the United States to attend Columbia University where he completed his undergraduate studies in Mathematics, Physics, and Humanities in 1948. He would go on to obtain a master's degree at Princeton University and to study German and philosophy at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, and he later obtained a Doctorate at the Free University of Berlin. For his life's work he was awarded a Doctorate Honoris Causa by Brandeis University.