He did extensive work concerning radio communication, microwave technology, computer music, psychoacoustics, and science fiction.

Born in Des Moines, Iowa, he earned his PhD from Caltech, and died in Sunnyvale, California,[2] from complications of Parkinson's Disease.

Pierce wrote about electronics and information theory, and developed jointly the concept of pulse-code modulation (PCM) with his Bell Laboratories colleagues Bernard M. Oliver and Claude Shannon.

According to Kompfner's book, the statement "Rudi invented the traveling-wave tube, and John discovered it" was due to Dr. Eugene G. Fubini, quoted in The New Yorker "Profile" on Pierce, September 21, 1963.

Other famous Pierce quips are "Funding artificial intelligence is real stupidity", "I thought of it the first time I saw it", and "After growing wildly for years, the field of computing appears to be reaching its infancy."

[13] See ECHO – America's First Communications Satellite (reprinted from SMEC Vintage Electrics Volume 2 #1) for some details on his original contributions.

Pierce directed the Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee that produced the ALPAC report, which had the effect of curtailing most funding for work on machine translation during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

[18] In 1975, he received the IEEE Medal of Honor for "his pioneering concrete proposals and the realization of satellite communication experiments, and for contributions in theory and design of traveling wave tubes and in electron beam optics essential to this success."

[19] Besides his technical books, Pierce wrote science fiction using the pseudonym J.J. Coupling, which refers to the total angular momenta of individual particles.

[22] During his later years, as a visiting professor at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, he and his wife Brenda were known for having dinner parties in their Palo Alto home, in which they would invite an eclectic variety of guests and have lively discussions concerning topics ranging from space exploration to politics, health care, and 20th-century music.