[13][14][5] Bourne was trained as a physical chemist in the mid to late 1970s and obtained his PhD in 1979[6] at the Flinders University.

[16] He is known for writing the book Unix for VMS Users (1990)[7] and for being co-developer of the Combinatorial Extension algorithm for the three-dimensional alignment of protein structures,[17] together with I. Shindyalov (1998).

[9] Bourne is an editor of the popular Ten Simple Rules series of editorials published in the PLoS Computational Biology journal.

[21] He has served as the Associate Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Industrial Alliances[12] and a professor of pharmacology at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).

[25][26] Bourne is author of numerous scientific articles and book chapters and editor of the Structural Bioinformatics textbook.