Robert Henry Thouless was born on 14 July 1894. He was educated at the City of Norwich School and he studied at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he obtained the degree of B.A. in Natural Sciences in 1915. During the Great War he served in the Royal Engineers with the British Salonika Force and after the interruption of the War he was awarded the degree of Ph.D. from Cambridge in 1922.

In 1921 Thouless was appointed Lecturer in Pyschology at Manchester University, then in 1926 he was Lecturer at Glasgow University, and then back to Cambridge as a Lecturer in 1938. At Cambridge he became Reader in Educational Psychology in 1945, and from 1961 he was Reader Emeritus there.

In 1962 and in 1966 Thouless was lecturing in Australia. He was a Consultant for the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) in 1964, President of the British Psychological Society in 1949, President of the Society for Psychical Research in 1942, President of Section J (Psychology) of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1937. Thouless's publications spanned across six decades and includedAn introduction to the psychology of religion(1923),Straight and crooked thinking(1930),Straight thinking in war time(1942),Authority and freedom(1954),Experimental psychical research(1963), andMissing the message(1971).

Latterly Robert Henry Thouless had lived in Cambridge, and he died on 25 September 1984.