He spent one of his high school years in Nîmes, France, on a three-year scholarship that was interrupted by World War II.

While attending the fourth International Conference on the Physics of Semiconductors in Rochester, New York, he convinced the organizers to choose Prague for the next meeting in 1960, in which he acted as a local chair.

After spending a few months at the University of Paris he moved with his family to Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, United States, for a 12-month fellowship.

In October 1969, when the Czech Academy of Sciences annulled his sabbatical leave and requested his return, Tauc refused and accepted a position of professor of engineering and physics at the Brown University, Rhode Island, which he held until his retirement in 1992.

[5][6] In 2003, long after the fall of the Communist regime, he received the De Scientia et Humanitate Optime Meritis medal, the highest award for a scientist in Czech Republic.

Jan was a long-term friend and colleague of Manuel Cardona, who, among other things, persuaded him to accept the position at Brown University in 1970.