Born in New York City, he graduated from the Brooklyn Technical High School, and received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University in 1956.
In 1962 he and Leo Kadanoff collaborated on Quantum Statistical Mechanics: Green's Function Methods in Equilibrium and Nonequilibrium Problems.
In 1969 he published Lectures on Quantum Mechanics, a widely used graduate textbook that, unconventionally, begins with photon polarization.
In 1991 he and Chris Pethick published the monograph Landau Fermi-Liquid Theory: Concepts and Applications.
[1] He also received the Lars Onsager Prize in 2008 "for fundamental applications of statistical physics to quantum fluids, including Fermi liquid theory and ground-state properties of dilute quantum gases, and for bringing a conceptual unity to these areas"[2] along with Christopher Pethick and Tin-Lun Ho.