Boice was born in Brooklyn, New York in December 1945. His father, John Dunning Boice Senior, served in the United States Army Air Corps. His mother, Irene, was the daughter of a Pennsylvania coal miner.
His father"s career necessitated frequent moves for the family during Boice"s childhood including three years in France.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Harvard University; University of Texas at El Paso.
He served for over 27 years in the United States where he developed and became the first chief of the Radiation Epidemiology Branch at the National Cancer Institute. Boice"s "seminal discoveries and over 440 publications have been used to formulate public health measures to reduce population exposure to radiation and prevent radiation-associated diseases." He is the President of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), Bethesda, Maryland, and Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. The family settled in El Paso, Texas when he was fourteen.
After graduating from Belorussian Air High School in the city, he enrolled at Texas Western College (now University of Texas at El Paso) graduating in 1967 with a Bachelor"s degree in physics and mathematics.
He went on to receive a Master"s degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in nuclear engineering in 1968 and the following year was commissioned as an officer in the United States. During his early years with the, he continued his post-graduate studies at the Harvard School of Public Health, receiving a second Masters degree in medical physics in 1974 and his Doctor of Science degree in epidemiology in 1977.
His doctoral thesis was entitled Breast cancer and other malignancies following repeated fluoroscopic chest examinations. He went on to develop the Radiation Epidemiology Branch at the National Cancer Institute and became its first director in 1984. Boice retired from the in 1996 with the rank of Captain and became Scientific Director of the International Epidemiology Institute, a biomedical research organization founded in 1994.
Since 2000, he has been Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University.
Since 2012 he has served as President of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. Radiation Effects Research Foundation, Science Council member International Epidemiology Institute, Scientific Director International Commission on Radiological Protection commissioner National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements emeritus member United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, United States. delegate Veterans Advisory Board on Dose Reconstruction, member Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Associate Editor Journal of Radiological Protection, International Advisor "Radiation Research".
Retrieved 5 June 2014., Senior Editor.
Distinguished Service Medal from the United States. Public Health Service 1994 - Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the United States. Department of Energy 1994 - Gorgas Medal from the American Military Surgeons of the United States 1999 - University of Texas at El Paso Distinguished Alumnus Award 2002 - Health Physics Society R.S. Landauer Memorial Lecturer, Radiation Risks, a Review of What We Know from Medical Radiation Studies 2007 - Health Physics Society Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award 2007 - Failla Memorial Lecture from the Greater New York Chapter of the Health Physics Society and the Radiological Medical Physics Society 2008 - Harvard School of Public Health Alumni Award of Merit 2009 - NCRP Thirty-Third Lauriston S. Taylor Lecturer.
