He entered King's College, Cambridge, in 1919 to study physics and mathematics, became an Apostle, and gained a BA in 1923 and MA in 1926.

According to theologian Alister McGrath, Braithwaite's 1955 Eddington Memorial Lecture "An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief"[12] is to date the most widely cited publication (e.g. by Anglican priest Don Cupitt) in a genre of 1970s–1980s theological works arguing that "God" and "religion" are human constructs—having no independent reality of their own—and that human dignity and freedom may best be advanced by systematic deconstruction of these two ideas, although Braithwaite himself had little sympathy for vague claims like these.

[17] He also argued that one aspect of all 'moral theistic religions' which was of "great psychological value", in that it enabled religious individuals to persevere, was that they are performing the will of God.

[18] His major work was his book Scientific Explanation: A Study of the Function of Theory, Probability and Law in Science (1953) but, like his Eddington Lecture it was his inaugural lecture ("Theory of Games as a Tool for the Moral Philosopher") that was his more original contribution: although a logician and philosopher of science, he had been elected to a chair of moral philosophy (ethics) about which he considered he knew little.

[20] After his retirement in 1967, Braithwaite was a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University where he lectured on game theory and encouraged one of his students, Alexander Rosenberg, to apply the approach of Scientific Explanation to economics.

[24] A Festschrift, Science, Belief and Behaviour: Essays in Honour of R. B. Braithwaite, edited by D. H. Mellor, was published in 1980.

[26][27] For a more complete list of works see "Bibliography of the philosophical writings of R. B. Braithwaite"[25] or his entry at PhilPapers.