He taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from 1959 to 1996 and in 1998 he won the American Physical Society's Oliver E. Buckley Prize for his work on high temperature superconductivity.
During the 1990s Ginsberg edited and contributed to the five-volume book titled The Physical Properties of High Temperature Superconductors.
Donald Ginsberg published more than 240 papers with many hundreds of coauthors at two dozen domestic and foreign institutions.
To celebrate his retirement, on April 19, 1997, a day-long symposium entitled "Superconductivity with a Smile" was held at Illinois and attended by more than 100 colleagues, former students, and friends, some of whom traveled hundreds or thousands of miles to be there.
After his retirement, he wrote several books of poetry, which featured his whimsical observations of physics, physicists, and personal life.