Porter, one of the most distinguished protein chemists and immunologists in Britain, was born and educated in Lancashire, graduating from Liverpool University in 1939; the outbreak of World War II interrupted the doctoral research he began there and Porter served in the Royal Engineers until December 1945, rising to the rank of major. He returned to research at Cambridge as the first graduate student of Frederick Sanger. He obtained his doctorate in 1948 and the following year joined the scientific staff of the National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London, collaborating with A.J.P. Martin; this was the period of his first crucial research on antibodies.

In 1960 Porter became the first holder of the Pfizer Professorship of Immunology at St. Mary's Hospital -- the first Chair of Immunology to be created in Britain. His continuing research on antibody structure at this time was helped by funding from the Medical Research Council (MRC) and in large part from the American National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. When the Whitley Chair of Biochemistry at Oxford became vacant on the retirement of Sir Hans Krebs, Porter was invited to accept the appointment, which he held from 1967 until his death. During the Oxford period Porter's research interests moved to the components of the complement system, in the MRC Immunochemistry Unit which he founded and directed. His career was as active and productive as it had ever been when, three weeks before his retirement from the Whitley Chair and the start of full-time commitment to research as the Director of the Immunochemistry Unit, he was killed in a road accident on 6 September 1985.

Porter received many honours and distinctions, nationally and internationally. He was elected to the Royal Society (1964) and to Honorary membership of the National Academy of Sciences (1973); he received the Ciba Medal of the Biochemical Society and a Royal Medal of the Royal Society (1973). In 1972 he received the highest scientific honour when he shared with Gerald Edelman the Nobel Prize for Medicine for determining the chemical structure of an antibody. In 1985 he became a Companion of Honour in the Birthday Honours.

In 1991, Raymond Dwek founded the Oxford Glycobiology Institute at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, and this building was named the Rodney Porter building.