Between 1951 and 1955 he was a student at the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, from which he graduated in 1955 with the thesis "Sodium-Vapor Lamp", supervised by Radu Grigorovici.

In 1955, following graduation, Iovitzu Popescu was offered a position at the University of Bucharest by Eugen Bădărău,[6] in the Department of Optics and Gas Discharges, which he accepted.

In 1970, he started his collaboration with Carl B. Collins, head of the Center for Quantum Electronics at University of Texas at Dallas, on multiphoton spectroscopy and induced gamma emission.

In 1982, Iovitzu Popescu wrote that the aether is "a form of existence of the matter, but it differs qualitatively from the common (atomic and molecular) substance or radiation (photons)".

[11] In recent years, the interest of Iovitzu Popescu has shifted to the field of quantitative linguistics,[12][13][14][15][16][17] which has become one of his favorite leisure activities.

[25] The excellence of Iovitzu Popescu's work has been widely recognized: To date, the most cited peer-reviewed publication of Iovitzu Popescu remains his collaborative review, with Silviu Olariu, on the quantum effects of electromagnetic fluxes,[26] recently quoted in the review paper Topological Metamaterials (2022).

[27] Popescu's handwritten textbook on geometrical optics, first published in 1988, was recently translated into English and is freely available online.