Rice was born in Shedds, Oregon (later renamed Shedd).
He received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Oregon State University and did graduate work at Caltech and at Columbia University. He worked for nearly forty years at Bell Labs.[3] At Bell Labs, Rice discovered the Rice distribution and Rice's formula. In 1957–58 he was a visiting professor at Harvard University.
His paper “Mathematical Analysis of Random Noise”, published in the Bell System Technical Journal divided over two issues,[4][5] is considered as a classic reference in its field.[1][2]