Joseph Klafter was born in Tel Aviv in Mandatory Palestine in 1945 to Slovak immigrant parents who came to Israel illegally in 1939 as part of Aliyah Bet.

[2] He then engaged in post-doctoral studies in chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and then worked in research and development at Exxon for eight years.

[3] Klafter joined the Tel Aviv University Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Chemistry in 1987, and became a full professor in 1989.

[3] From 2002 to 2009 he chaired the Israel Science Foundation[3][1][4] Klafter was the eighth president of Tel Aviv University, for two terms from 2009 to 2019, when he was succeeded by Ariel Porat.

[1] Klafter is the co-author of First Steps in Random Walks: From Tools to Applications (2011) and has published over 400 scientific articles and edited 18 books.