He spent his boyhood at various stations to which his father, a United States Navy Chaplain, was assigned, including Hawaii and Samoa.
He subsequently served in Japan in a civilian capacity as the civil information and education officer on the Fukuoka Military Government Team.
Hester began his academic career at Princeton University, where he excelled in the humanities, election to Phi Beta Kappa, and earned an A.B.
As a Rhodes Scholar, he crossed the Atlantic to Pembroke College, Oxford, earning a bachelor's degree Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1947.
Hester served as chairman of the President's Task Force on Priorities in Higher Education in the United States (1969).
Upon leaving the rectorship, Hester served a term as President of The New York Botanical Garden, and until his death remained President of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation in New York, an operating foundation charged by its founder to support research on the causes, manifestations and control of violence, aggression, and dominance.
After retiring from full-time involvement in the academic world, Hester continued a second career as highly regarded artist, whose oil paintings and portraits were commissioned by a wide array of individuals and institutions.