Josef Fried was born in the town of Przemyśl, Poland, on July 21, 1914. 
Fried received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Columbia University in 1940.
Fried joined the Squibb Institute in 1944 as a head of its antibiotics and steroids department. He was later promoted to director of the organic chemistry section in 1959.
In 1963 Fried was appointed professor at the Ben May Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Chicago.