[2] He worked at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics,[3] the United States Army Aviation and Missile Command,[4] the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory,[5] and the Louisiana State University.

[15] Dowling is the author of a popular science book, "Schrödinger's Killer App – Race to Build the World's First Quantum Computer".

[23] A story in this book about early motivations for funding quantum computing by the United States military was illustrated by Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal following his death.

[24] Additionally, this book formulated what is known as the Dowling-Neven Law,[25] regarding the classical cost of simulating quantum computers growing doubly exponentially in time, given that the number of qubits on current quantum computers is currently growing exponentially with time.

The first book's sequel, "Schrödinger's Web: Race to Build the Quantum Internet", has been released posthumously.