Robbins Burling was born on April 18, 1926 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He received his Bachelors Degree from Yale University in 1950 and his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University in 1958. After he finished college, Burling got married and had three children. His teaching career began as a Teaching Fellow in Anthropology at Harvard University in the Fall of 1953, the Spring of 1954 and the Spring of 1957.

Burling was an Instructor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1957-1959. He became an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Pennsylvania from 1959-1963. From 1959-1963 he was the Assistant Curator of General Ethnology at the University Museum.

From 1959-1960, Burling was a Visiting Lecturer, Fulbright Program, in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Rangoon, Burma. He became an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Associate of the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Michigan from 1966-1995. Currently, he is a Emeritus Professor at the University of Michigan.

Throughout his interesting career, Burling has written many papers about language, culture and the ethnology of India and Bangladesh. He has traveled throughout the world to do research on these topics and has visited many interesting places. Burling has lived in Oslo, Norway, and Meghalaya, India.