Dr. Rhee received his B.S. degree in chemistry from Seoul national university and PhD degree in organic chemistry from Catholic university of America in 1965 and 1972, respectively. He was a postdoctoral fellow of Earl Stadtman's group at NIH. He started his own lab at NIH as a section chief of signal transduction after several years of working as a senior biochemst.
His most acclaimed contribution to cell signaling is the discovery of seven of the twelve isozymes of phospholipase C. He was ranked among the most cited 250 biochemists.