During this time he was a member of the RNA Tie Club, a social and discussion group which attacked the question of how DNA encodes proteins.
[5] At Harvard, Rich studied with John Edsall, who inspired him to pursue an academic career.
[3] In 1949, he moved to the California Institute of Technology to perform postdoctoral research with Linus Pauling.
Rich worked as a section chief in physical chemistry at the National Institutes of Health from 1954 to 1958.
[3][4] He spent a sabbatical at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge (1955–1956), where he worked with Francis Crick and solved the structure of collagen.
[7] In 1963, Rich discovered polysomes: clusters of ribosomes which read one strand of mRNA simultaneously.
[12] After 26 years of attempts, Rich et al. finally crystallised the junction box of B- and Z-DNA.