Born to a family of German descent in Chicago, Richard Tilly studied history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
After working for an insurance company, Tilly continued his studies, earning his Ph.D. in economics in 1964 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, after two years of intensive research in Germany.
After holding positions in Ann Arbor and Yale, he was appointed director of the newly founded Institute for Economic and Social History of the University of Münster in 1966, which he directed until his retirement in 1997.
Of his eight books, his classics Financial Institutions and Industrialization in the Rhineland, 1815-1870 (1966) and Kapital, Staat und sozialer Protest in der deutschen Industrialisierung (1980) deserve special mention.
His concise historical overview of Germany's economic and social development Vom Zollverein zum Industriestaat: Die wirtschaftlich-soziale Entwicklung Deutschlands 1834 bis 1934 (1990) achieved great importance as a teaching text.