Roy MacLeod studied history and biochemistry at Harvard University and was awarded the AB degree summa cum laude.

[1] Today among the most cited journals in the field, MacLeod served as co-editor, with David Edge of Edinburgh, for the next 21 years, standing down in 1992.

In 1980, he was appointed a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, where he wrote on military history and modern statecraft.

[9] In 2000 working from Sydney, MacLeod became editor-in-chief of the academic journal Minerva: A Review of Science, Learning and Policy, and served in that position until 2008.

In this role, he broadened the scope and compass of the journal to embrace the new field of ‘Science and Technology Studies’ (STS) and to reach a global readership.

[10] In 2003, following his formal retirement from the University of Sydney, he was appointed emeritus professor of history,[11] and he has remained in the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry (SOPHI).

[1][2] MacLeod has held a number of visiting positions ― at Indiana, Harvard, UC Santa Cruz, UBC, Stockholm, Bolongna, Florence, Paris, Oxford and Cambridge.

He has been the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. (part of the Smithsonian Institution) in 2010.