David Bainbridge was born and educated in Essex at Brentwood School between 1976 and 1986. He then trained as a veterinary surgeon at the University of Cambridge. His research career included a PhD at the Institute of Zoology (1993-1996) in London, short stints at Cornell University and the University of Sydney, and further work at the University of Oxford (1996-1999) and Royal Veterinary College (1999-2003).

In 2003, he was appointed Clinical Veterinary Anatomist at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge.

Bainbridge's first book, A Visitor Within: The Science of Pregnancy (published in the US as Making Babies) was first published in 2000, and was a Washington Post 'book rave' of 2001.

Other books followed, including The X in Sex: How the X Chromosome Controls Our Lives in 2003, which won the American Association of Medical Writers' Prize and Beyond the Zonules of Zinn: A Fantastic Journey Through Your Brain in 2008. In these, Bainbridge expanded his interests in the evolutionary basis of human biology and behaviour, a trend which continued in 2009, with the publication of Teenagers: A Natural History - a 'zoological' look at the vagaries of human adolescence in which he argued that teenagers are the pinnacle of human existence.