Houbolt was born in Altoona, Iowa in 1919. He spent part of his childhood in Joliet, Illinois, where he attended Joliet Central High School and Joliet Junior College. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, earning a B.S. in 1940 and an M.S. degree in 1942, both in Civil Engineering. He later received a Ph.D. degree in Technical Sciences in 1957 from ETH Zurich. Houbolt began his career at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1942, and stayed on at NASA after it succeeded NACA. From 1963 to 1976, he worked for a consulting firm, Aeronautics Research Associates, then returned to NASA until retirement in 1985.