Porter took his undergraduate degree at Stanford University and earned his Ph.D. in 1981 from Princeton University. He has held appointments as visiting professor at many universities in Europe and the United States. In 2008 he was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Porter is especially interested in the connections between natural and social sciences with an emphasis on the role of statistics and numbers. His most recent book Karl Pearson: The Scientific Life in a Statistical Age was published in 2004.