Jacob Nachmias earned degrees in psychology from Cornell University, Swarthmore College, and Harvard University. He studied at Cambridge University on a Fulbright Scholarship as well. Upon completion of his education, he worked for a year as an NIH Fellow at the University of Rochester. He then joined Swarthmore College until 1961, when he settled at the University of Pennsylvania. He became Professor Emeritus in 1995.

He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and as a Fellow of OSA. In 1994, he received OSA’s Edgar D. Tillyer Award “for his theoretical and empirical contributions to our understanding of spatial vision.”

He passed away in 2019.