He was born in Harbin, China, but became a naturalized citizen of the United States of America in 1944.
He received the Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1944, and his Ph. D degree from the University of Minnesota in physical chemistry in 1950.
From 1944 to 1946, during World War II and shortly afterward, he served in the United States Army.
He married Margaret Louise Marsh on July 31, 1972.
He spent most of his active life as a polymer chemist at DuPont and now heads his own company.
He is best known for his work with Robert G. Parr on the method of molecular orbital computation now known (because it was independently developed by John A. Pople) as the Pariser-Parr-Pople method (PPP method), published both by Pariser and Parr and by Pople in almost simultaneous papers in 1953.