Relative proton affinities (PAs) of tyrosine, 3‐chlorotyrosine, and 3‐iodotyrosine were obtained using the kinetic method approach. The measured mean values are 922.5, 912.9, and 917.9 kJ/mol, respectively, with ± 0.1 kJ/mol standard deviation, indicating that halogenation of tyrosine decreases its PA. In general, PA of a molecule increases as its isotropic polarizability increases, but no such correlation has been found for the three molecules investigated in this study. Our findings show that PA decreases with increasing electronegativity of the modifying atom for a halogenated molecule, further supporting computational results of previous work [5].