[2] The younger Reiffel attended Theodore Roosevelt High School, before earning a bachelor's and master's degree as well as a doctorate in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology between 1947 and 1953.
[3] Reiffel began his career at the University of Chicago's Institute for Nuclear Studies, helping Enrico Fermi construct a 450-inch cyclotron.
[4][5] Reiffel also collaborated with German scientists recruited in America as part of Operation Paperclip, working on an early prototype for a railgun.
[3] Reiffel was involved in several positions in NASA's Apollo program, moving from being a consultant on the possibility of life on the Moon[6] to become deputy director of the project,[7] a post he held from 1965 to 1969.
[10] He also acted as a consultant to the governments of Belarus and Ukraine following the Chernobyl incident; this experience led him to write an unpublished second novel about nuclear terrorism.