The eldest of four surviving children of William Henry Bailey, a British Army engineer, and his wife Suzana (née Lazarus), an expatriate Romanian linguist, Bailey is notable for his work in ionospheric physics and population dynamics.
Bailey read physics at The Queen's College, University of Oxford, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1919.
thesis was entitled "The Diffusion of Ions in Gases", and he graduated in 1923.
[citation needed] In 1924, he was appointed as associate professor of physics at the University of Sydney.
[citation needed] Bailey married Joyce Hewitt in 1934.