[2] Roederer earned a Ph.D. in physical-mathematical sciences at University of Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1952 where he studied with Estrella Mazzoli de Mathov.

From 1953 to 1955 he worked as guest research scientist at Werner Heisenberg's Max Planck Institute for Physics in Göttingen, Germany.

In 1977 he was appointed director of the Geophysical Institute at UAF, a post he held until 1986; during that time he also served four years as dean of the College of Environmental Sciences.

A visiting staff member of the Los Alamos National Laboratory since 1978, he was chairman of its advisory committee on Earth and Space Sciences from 1983 to 1988.

He now lives in Boulder, Colorado, where one of his activities is writing politically oriented letters[3] to the local newspaper The Daily Camera.