Oliver Braddick gained his PhD for work on binocular vision at Cambridge University. Following a postdoctoral period at Brown University he was appointed to the faculty in Experimental Psychology at Cambridge, where he developed highly cited work on the short-range motion system and where he and Janette Atkinson set up the Visual Development Unit in 1976. For over 30 years the Unit has pioneered new psychophysical and EEG approaches to the development of visual functions in human infants, and applied them to developmental problems in both ophthalmology and pediatric neurology. In 1993 the Unit moved to University College London where both Braddick and Atkinson were appointed to Chairs in Psychology. In 2001 he was appointed Chair and Head of Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University, where he is now Emeritus Professor.
He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2001, of the Academia Europaea in 2008, and a Fellow of the British Academy in 2012. In 2009 he and Janette Atkinson were jointly honored with the Kurt Koffka Medal of the University of Giessen.