Raines graduated from West Essex High School in North Caldwell, New Jersey,[1] where he was taught by award-winning chemistry teacher, Rex T.

degrees in chemistry and biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, doing undergraduate research with Christopher T. Walsh on pyridoxal phosphate-dependent enzymes.

He earned A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry at Harvard University for work with Jeremy R. Knowles on catalysis by triosephosphate isomerase.

Raines was a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow with William J. Rutter in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, where he cloned and expressed the gene encoding bovine pancreatic ribonuclease.

He was the Chair of the NIH study section that evaluated grant applications in synthetic and biological chemistry.