Komlos received a Ph.D in history and economics at the University of Chicago where he was influenced by the Nobel Prize winning economic historian Robert Fogel to research the economic history of human physical stature. Komlos named this new discipline "anthropometric history" in 1989. He was a fellow at the Carolina Population Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1984 to 1986. Komlos taught at such institutions as the University of Vienna, Duke University, the Vienna University of Economics, University of St. Gallen, and North Carolina State University. He has been teaching at the University of Munich since 1992. He is the founding editor of Economics and Human Biology in 2003.

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