He was a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, affiliated with the departments of mathematics, economics, and industrial engineering and operations research.

Gale lived in Berkeley, California, and Paris, France with his partner Sandra Gilbert, feminist literary scholar and poet.

Gale and F. M. Stewart initiated the study of infinite games with perfect information.

His classic 1960 book The Theory of Linear Economic Models continues to be a standard reference for this area.

In 2004 Gale developed MathSite, a pedagogic website that uses interactive exhibits to illustrate important mathematical ideas.