[3] His parents were Henry Sage Fenimore Cooper, a surgeon at Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital,[4] and Katherine Lemoine Guy.

[5] Cooper spent summers throughout his childhood and later life in Cooperstown, and grew up swimming in Otsego Lake and in the surrounding forest and fields.

[3] Cooper attributed his interest in science writing to elementary school, where he read a copy of From the Earth to the Moon, an 1865 novel by Jules Verne.

[4] Henry S. F. Cooper attended the Buckley School in New York City and Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts.

[4][9] He then attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for several months, before hearing from The New Yorker's editor William Shawn.

[9] Later in life, Cooper spent more time in Cooperstown,[6] and purchased a house nearby, in Middlefield's Red Creek section.

[9] In Cooperstown, he was a board member of the Glimmerglass Opera, the Otsego Land Trust, and a founder of the Smithy Pioneer Gallery.

He was a trustee of the Yale University Art Gallery beginning in 1970, and of the Yale Library Associates beginning in 1976. Cooper was also a member of the Authors Guild, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Municipal Art Society, the Grolier Club, and the Coffee House Club.

[9] The New York Society Library considered Cooper the éminence grise of its organization, as he served on its board from 1971 to 2015, and as chair from 1985 to 1992.

[15] During the production of the 2004 Wes Anderson film The Life Aquatic, Cooper was in Rome visiting his daughter Molly, then an assistant to producer Barry Mendel.