Hiram Bingham III was born on November 19, 1875, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father, Hiram Bingham II, was a Protestant missionary. He attended Punahou School, then known as O’ahu College, in Hawaii from 1882-1892. When he was a teenager he moved to Andover, Massachusetts, in order to attend Phillips Academy, from which he graduated in 1894. He then obtained a Bachelor’s degree from Yale University, a degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph. D. degree from Harvard University. He then taught history and politics at Harvard University. In 1907, he became a lecturer on South American history at Yale University. On November 20, 1899, Bingham married Alfreda Mitchell, with whom he had seven children. After their divorce in June 1937, he married Suzanne Carroll Hill.

Bingham’s first encounter with Incan ruins was on a 1908 trip to Santiago, Chile, for the First Pan American Scientific Congress, to which he was a delegate. On his way home, a local convinced him to visit the ruins of the Incan city Choquequirao. He published an account of the trip called Across South America; an account of a journey from Buenos Aires to Lima by way of Potosí, with notes on Brazil, Chile, and Peru, which was published in 1911. This trip sparked interest in Bingham for lost Incan cities, even though he had no training as an archeologist. The same year his book was published, Bingham returned to Peru with the Yale Peruvian Expedition. On July 24, 1911, Bingham was led to the ruins of Machu Picchu by a local named Melchor Arteaga. It is because of this that Bingham is credited with publicizing the existence of Machu Picchu, which was almost completely unknown to the outside world. He later wrote an account of the expedition, called Lost City of the Incas. Published in 1948, the book was an instant best-seller. Shortly after the Machu Picchu expedition, Bingham discovered two more Incan cities. One of these cities, Vitcos, is where the last Incan emperor was assassinated. Supported by Yale University and the National Geographic Society, Bingham returned to Peru in 1912 and 1915.

His expeditions done, Bingham settled in Connecticut. He spent most of his time in New Haven, but he spent his summers in Salem. He joined the Connecticut National Guard in 1916, where he attained the rank of captain. The following year he became an aviator and achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Air Service. For a time he became an instructor in the Air Service. Between 1922 and 1924, Bingham served as the Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut. In November 1924, he was elected for the office of the Governor. In the next month, he was chosen to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate following the suicide of one of the senators. Choosing his Senate position over his Governor position, Bingham served as Governor of Connecticut for one day, the shortest term for a governor in Connecticut history. He won his re-election bid to the Senate in 1926. After this second term he again ran for reelection, but lost. Bingham died on June 6, 1956, in Washington, D.C.  He is buried in Arlington National Cemetary.