His career was spent at Bell Labs, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Argonne National Laboratory; he served as editor of Hyperfine Interactions, Methods in Materials Research, and the Annual Review of Materials Research.
[3] Kaufmann graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with his bachelor's degree physics in 1964.
He then attended California Institute of Technology under the advisorship of Felix Boehm,[2] graduating with his PhD in physics in 1968.
[4] In 1981 he joined the staff of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, becoming the leader of their Materials Division in 1986.
[2] He was elected as a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1988 for "development and application of a broad range of techniques such as nuclear and electron resonance spectroscopies and ion beam analysis to fundamental studies in materials science.