His family left Austria for Cuba after the Kristallnacht on the MS St. Louis and was forced to return to Europe, where his mother, his sister, and himself disembarked in France, living as refugees under German occupation in Loudun before relocating to Limoges.

In September 1941, his family secured a visa to the United States and emigrated to New York City by way of Spain and Portugal.

[5] At Berkeley, he discovered that electrons in liquid helium were attached to microscopic and quantized vortex rings, matching the prediction made by Lars Onsager and Richard Feynman.

His students at Berkeley included George W. Rayfield, Jill H. Larkin, and Clifford Surko.

His sister Liane Reif-Lehrer, was a biochemist and professor at Harvard Medical School, and his niece is anthropologist Erica Lehrer.