The family moved from Pittsburgh to Morgantown WV when Lach’s father became an accountant and obtained jobs in the fine glass industry.
He co–authored two books in the early 1950s: Modern Far Eastern International Relations (with University of Chicago professor Harley Farnsworth MacNair (1950); and Europe and the Modern World (published in two volumes, 1951 & 1954; with University of Chicago professor Louis Gottschalk).
In 1957, Lach published a translation, with commentary, of the preface to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz' Novissima Sinica.
[citation needed] In 1969, Lach was named the first Bernadotte E. Schmitt Professor in History at the University of Chicago.
The following year, the first book of the second volume of Asia in the Making of Europe was published as part of a continuing series from the University of Chicago Press.
[3] He retired from teaching in 1988, but continued researching and writing Volume 3 of Asia in the Making of Europe.
[5] In 2001 his colleagues, friends, former students, and family established The Donald F. Lach Memorial Book Fund at the University of Chicago Library.