John R. Rice studied mathematics at the California Institute of Technology, receiving his Ph.D. in 1959. He spent one year in Washington D.C. on a National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship and then four years as a research mathematician at the General Motors Research Laboratories. He came to Purdue University in 1964 as Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science. In 1983 - 1996 he was Head of the Department of Computer Sciences and in 1989 he was appointed W. Brooks Fortune Distinguished Professor of Computer Sciences. In 2001 he co-founded Arxan Technologies, a computer security company.
His early research work was mostly in mathematics (approximations theory) but he has always had a strong interest in computers. His very first publication in 1953 as a college sophomore was Electronic Brains and in 1969 he published a leading text book of the day: Introduction to Computer Science. Over the years his research gradually shifted to computer science and now he is working in the areas of
Computer security
Supercomputers and parallel computations
Computational Science and Engineering
Problem solving environments for scientific applications
Solving partial differential equations
His professional career includes terms as Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Numerical Mathematics (1970-73) and Chair of the Computing Research Association (1991-93). He was founder and Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (1975-1993). Professional honors include the 1975 Forsythe Distinguished Lectureship, Fellow of the AAAS, Fellow of the ACM, and election to the National Academy of Engineering.