From Leyden he passed to Paris to study anatomy, and bought a collection of mathematical works at the sale of the library of the Abbé Jean Gallois.
For seven years (1739–1746) he was chiefly employed in the preparation of the fifth London Pharmacopœia for the Royal College of Physicians; he performed all the chemical and pharmaceutical experiments.
The work was published in 1746 as Translation and Improvement of the London Dispensatory, and he received from the college a gift of the copyright and a hundred guineas above the expenses incurred.
Pemberton's book was not remunerative, and was regarded as disappointing; George Lewis Scott, however, recommended it to Edward Gibbon.
His Account of the Ancient Ode prefaces Gilbert West's Pindar, and a paper On the Dispute about Fluxions is in the second volume of Benjamin Robins's ‘Works.’