Arthur E. Cooper was born in 1911 in Winnipeg Manitoba. He graduated from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario with a B. Sc. Mechanical Engineering (honours). After graduating he worked and a demonstrator at his alma mater. After this he worked at a variety of jobs. He enlisted with the RCEME (Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) between 1944-1946.
In 1950 he began working at Honeywell Controls Ltd., Toronto starting out as a Supervisor of methods, standards, and inspection and ending up the Training Director, running human resources training seminars in sensitivity, time study, production control, electronic data processing and other subjects.
In 1965 he began his career at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute as a professor in Mechanical Engineering Technology. He taught at Ryerson until 1977.