Zajonc received a B.S. in engineering physics from the University of Michigan in 1971. He received an M.S. (1973) and Ph.D. (1976) in physics at the University of Michigan as well. From 1976-1978 he was a research associate at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics at the University of Colorado and the National Bureau of Standards, Boulder, Colorado.
Zajonc became an assistant professor of physics at Amherst College in 1978, and was promoted to associate professor in 1984 and full professor in 1991. In 2006 he became an Andrew W. Mellon Professor at Amherst. He retired from this position in 2011, and is now Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus at Amherst College.[4]
Zajonc was the physics department chairman at Amherst College for three different appointments: 1987–1989, 1998–2000, and 2005–present. Later that same year [when?] he was a Scholar-in-Residence at the Fetzer Institute. He was the Senior Program Director of the Fetzer Institute 1995–1997. He was the director for the Academic Program of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society from 2004 to 2009, and served as Executive Director from 2009 to 2012. In this role, he focused the organization's work on the development and application of contemplative practices within higher education.
Zajonc held a number of dialogues with the Dalai Lama in 1997 which were published in 2004 under his scientific coordination and editorship as Dalai Lama: The New Physics and Cosmology. He was moderator for the 2003 dialogue with the Dalai Lama at MIT.
Zajonc, Arthur (1995). Catching the Light: The Entwined History of Light and Mind. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0195095753.
Greenstein, George; Zajonc, Arthur (2005). The Quantum Challenge: Modern Research on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (2nd Edition). Jones and Bartlett. ISBN978-0763724702. The first edition of this undergraduate text was published in 1997.
Seamon, David; Zajonc, Arthur, eds. (1998). Goethe's Way of Science. State University of New York. ISBN978-0791436820.
Zajonc, Arthur, ed. (2004). Dalai Lama: The New Physics and Cosmology. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0195159943. Edited by Zajonc, this book is based on a series of conversations with the Dalai Lama and several prominent physicists about quantum mechanics.
Harrington, Anne; Zajonc, Arthur, eds. (2008). The Dalai Lama at MIT. Harvard University Press. ISBN978-0674027336.
Zajonc, Arthur (2008). Meditation As Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love. Lindisframe Press. ISBN978-1584200628.