Jack Pole was born on 14 March 1922, the son of Joseph Pole and Phoebe (née Rickards). He was educated at Oxford University (graduating in 1949) and Princeton University (taking his PhD in 1953). In 1952 he married Marilyn Louise Mitchell (the marriage was dissolved in 1988); they had one son and two daughters.

Pole began his academic career while still at Princeton, as an Instructor in History, (1952-53), before spending ten years as an Assistant Lecturer and Lecturer in American History at University College London, (1953-63). Pole then moved to Cambridge University, to become Reader in American History and Government, (1963-79), also holding the positions of Fellow at Churchill College from 1963 to 1979 (Vice-Master, 1975-78) and Member of the Council of Senate, (1970-74). Leaving Cambridge in 1979, Pole became Rhodes Professor of American History and Institutions at Oxford University, (1979-89) and has been a Fellow of St Catherine’s College, Oxford, since 1979.

Pole's other academic posts included: Visiting Professorships at Berkeley [United States] (1960-61), Ghana, (1966), Chicago, (1969) and Peking [China] (1984); Commonwealth Fund American Studies Fellowship, (1956); Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences, (1969-70); Guest Scholar, Wilson International Center, Washington, (1978-79); Goleib Fellow, New York University Law School, (1990); Senior Resident Fellow, College of William and Mary, Virginia, 1991; Leverhulme Trust Emeritus Fellow, (1991-93); Jefferson Memorial Lecturer, Berkeley, (1971); Richard B. Russell Lecturer, Georgia, (1981). He was also Vice-President of the International Commission for History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions, (1990), a Council Member of the Institute for Early American History and Culture, (1973-76), a member of the Academie Européenne d’Histoire, (1981) and an Honorary Fellow of the Historical Society of Ghana. He died on 30 January 2010.