Pop was born in Glod village in what is now the commune of Strâmtura in Maramureș County in northern Romania (then part of Austria-Hungary), the son of a Greek-Catholic priest.
He later taught philological sciences at the University of Bucharest, being assistant professor (1936–1939) in the Romanian Literature Department led by Dumitru Caracostea.
He was a member of the Sociological Research Group and of the Romanian Social Institute (ISR), led by Dimitrie Gusti (1929–1936).
Pop was a recipient of the Herder Prize in 1967, also given to that year to Polish composer Witold Lutosławski, and Slovak sculptor Vladimír Kompánek.
He was visiting professor at major universities in Marburg, Germany, Berkeley and Ann Arbor (United States) and Paris, France.