Biber graduated from the University of Iowa medical school in 1948. He began performing surgery while in residency at a hospital in the Panama Canal Zone. Biber then joined the Army, where he was the chief surgeon of a mobile army surgical hospital during the Korean War. He finished his service at what is now Fort Carson, Colorado, and in 1954 took a job at a United Mine Workers clinic in Trinidad, Colorado. He delivered babies, set broken bones, and was considered an excellent surgeon by the town.