He trained as a Spitfire pilot in World War II, and published his first paper in 1954 on the Ordovician trilobites of Girvan.

[2] During preparation of the first edition of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Cyril James Stubblefield asked Tripp to step in to write the Lichid section of the Trilobite volume, in place of Elsa Warburg, who had died before her work was complete.

Elaborating on the work of Russian palaeontologist, Elsa Rosenstein, Tripp began developing an innovative system of distinguishing encrinurid taxa on the basis of the arrangement of their glabellar tubercles.

This set the groundwork for an eventual major splitting of a genus that had become a virtual garbage pail of encrinurids.

His colleagues and co-authors during or prior to that time included Euan Clarkson, Bill Evitt, Richard Fortey, Chris Gass, Yvonne Howells, Keith Ingham, Rolf Ludvigsen, David Rudkin, Cyril James Stubblefield, John Temple, Steve Tunnicliff, Harry Whittington, and Zhou Zhi-yi.