Robin Hochstrasser received his BSc from the Heriot-Watt College and PhD from the University of Edinburgh working with Mowbray Ritchie on surface photooxidation. After two years in the Royal Air Force he studied with W. G. Schneider at the National Research Council of Canada and with Michael Kasha at Florida State University.

Following a brief period on the faculty at the University of British Columbia he joined the University of Pennsylvania in 1963 where he is currently the Donner Professor of Physical Sciences and Director of the Ultrafast Laser Research Resource. Hochstrasser contributed research on spectroscopy of molecules and crystals in high electric and magnetic fields, triplet exciton dynamics and low temperature optical properties of molecular solids and proteins, ultrafast and nonlinear laser spectroscopy, fast photochemical reactions and barrier crossing dynamics, and most recently introduced femtosecond multidimensional spectroscopy in the infrared (2D IR echo methods) to peptides, proteins and biological assemblies.

He is the recipient of the Peter Debye Award, the E. Bright Wilson Award, the Albert F. Cotton Medal, the Benjamin Franklin Medal, the Zewail Award in Ultrafast Science and the Centenary Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.