He was educated at the Graues Kloster in Berlin, a prestigious grammar school with focus on classical languages where Ullendorff excelled in Latin and Greek.
While still a high school student, he received the special permission of Ismar Elbogen to attend lectures on Hebrew, Bible and Talmud studies at the Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums.
After his Abitur graduation, Ullendorff fled from the increasing persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany to Palestine in September 1938 (two months before the Kristallnacht pogroms) with the help of the Youth Aliyah organisation, leaving his family behind.
[5] After the end of the Second World War, Ullendorff returned to Jerusalem, where he worked as the Hebrew University's registrar and then for the British mandate administration, processing compensation payments for victims of terrorist attacks.
At the University of Oxford Ullendorff completed his DPhil dissertation about The relationship of modern Ethiopian languages to Geʽez (Classical Ethiopic) under the supervision of G. R. Driver in 1951.
[7] Ullendorff's wife Dina provided lifelong support for his academic research and translated Mélanie Oppenhejm's book Theresienstadt: Survival in Hell under her own name.
[10] After Ullendorff's death, the British Academy created the Edward Ullendorf Medal in 2012 which is awarded annually for "scholarly distinction and achievements in the field of Semitic Languages and Ethiopian Studies.