Place was born in Northallerton, Yorkshire. He was educated at Rugby School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He studied under and was strongly influenced by Gilbert Ryle at Oxford University. There, he became acquainted with philosophy of mind in the logical behaviorist tradition, of which Ryle was a major exponent. Although he would later abandon logical behaviorism as a theory of the mind in favor of the type-identity theory, Place nevertheless continued to harbor sympathies toward the behavioristic approach to psychology in general. He even went so far as to defend the "radical behaviorist" theses of B.F. Skinner, as expressed in "Verbal Behavior", from the criticisms of Noam Chomsky and the growing movement of cognitive psychology. Place died in Thirsk, Yorkshire.