After finishing his primary education, he went to Batavia (modern-day Jakarta) to study medicine; in the city's slums, he saw much poverty, which became an academic interest later in life.

After being expelled from medical school by the Japanese in 1943 for his political activities, Soedjatmoko moved to Surakarta and practiced medicine with his father.

To avoid censorship, he spent two years as a guest lecturer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and another three in self-imposed unemployment in Indonesia.

In 1978 Soedjatmoko received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, and in 1980 he was chosen as rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo.

[1] His younger sister Miriam Budiardjo was the first woman to be an Indonesian diplomat and became a co-founder and Dean of the Faculty of Social Science at the University of Indonesia.

[4] After returning to Indonesia, Soedjatmoko continued his studies at a Europeesche Lagere School (ELS) in Manado, North Sulawesi.

[2][6] After his expulsion, Soedjatmoko moved to Surakarta and studied Western history and political literature, which led to him developing an interest in socialism.

[2] In 1951, Soedjatmoko moved to Washington D.C. to establish the political desk at the Indonesian embassy there;[6] he also became the Alternate Permanent Representative of Indonesia at the UN.

Also in 1967, Soedjatmoko became adviser to foreign minister Adam Malik, as well as a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-basedthink tank; the following year he became Indonesian ambassador to the United States, a position which he held until 1971.

During his time as ambassador, Soedjatmoko received honorary doctorates from several American universities, including Cedar Crest College in 1969 and Yale in 1970.

That same year, he became a board member of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development, a position which he held until 1976; he also joined the Club of Rome.

In 1974, based on falsified documents, he was accused of planning the Malari incident of January 1974, in which students protested and eventually rioted during a state visit by Prime Minister of Japan Kakuei Tanaka.

[2][7] The citation read, in part: Encouraging both Asians and outsiders to look more carefully at the village folkways they would modernize, [Sodjatmoko] is fostering awareness of the human dimension essential to all development.

[...] [H]is writings have added consequentially to the body of international thinking on what can be done to meet one of the greatest challenges of our time; how to make life more decent and satisfying for the poorest 40 percent in Southeastern and southern Asia.

[8] In response, Soedjatmoko said he felt "humbled, because of [his] awareness that whatever small contribution [he] may have made is dwarfed by the magnitude of the problem of persistent poverty and human suffering in Asia, and by the realization of how much still remains to be done.

In September of that year he began service as the rector of the United Nations University, replacing James M. Hester; he remained in that position until 1987.