He graduated from school when he was just fifteen years old with the scholars prize. Afterwards, he enrolled in McGill University. He graduated when he was 19 years old with a B.Sc in cell biology. Being a student, he also was involved in The Jackson Laboratory's Summer Student Program in the 1970 under the mentorship of local Dr. Chen K. Chai. Jack attended the Cornell University, where he finally got his PhD Degree in biochemistry.

Afterwards, he decided to move to Mission Hill, Boston, where he started his own lab at the Sydney Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School. He was hired with a little help of Ruth Sager, he was young and there was not quite mush works to show. Then Howard Goodman lured him away to Massachusetts General Hospital and the Department of Molecular Biology in the 1984. After years of hard working in the 1988 he finally was granted tenure and got a full professorship at the Harvard Medical School.

In the 2009 he was honored by Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine along with his partners PhD Elizabeth Blackburn and PhD Carol W. Greider, with their amazing work of discovering how chromosomes are protected by telomeres.

In addition to his main work he also is an Alexander Rich Distinguished Investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. During the years in science, he has made great contributions to the field of genetics. His research findings in this area are also instrumental in the Human Genome Project.

Afterwards, his laboratory changed research direction and decided to focus on RNA enzymes, which was discovered in the early 90s. He works hard and developed his technique of in vitro evolution of RNA. In the 2006 he reached the Lasker Award. Two years later he got Dr H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics as well as Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In the 2011 Jack was honored by Oparin Medal. In the same years he joined the Starmus Board of Directors, and published his own lecture in the book, which was titled “Starmus: 50 Years of Man in Space”. In the 2016 he wrote a letter calling for Greenpeace, the United Nations and governments around the world to stop the fight with genetically modified organisms.

He is a very successful scientist and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, he also is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a married man. There is no any information about his wife and family. He likes to keep his personal life to himself and stays away from the media as far as possible. His total net worth is not disclosed by any source.