Pryce was born in Croydon to an Anglo-Welsh father and French mother, and in his teens attended the Royal Grammar School, Guildford.

[3][4] In 1937, he returned to England as a Fellow of Trinity, until, in 1939, he was appointed Reader in Theoretical Physics at Liverpool University under James Chadwick.

In 1944, he joined the British atomic energy team in Montreal designing nuclear reactors, but, in 1945, returned to England, first to Cambridge and then, in 1946, to Oxford, where he was appointed Wykeham Professor of Physics.

In 1947, in collaboration with John Ward, he co-authored a paper that originated on the probability amplitude of two entangled quanta propagating in opposite directions.

From 1968 to 1978, he served on the Technical Advisory Committee (for nuclear waste management) of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.