Rae was born in the Orkney Islands on 30 September, 1813. Graduating in medicine from Edinburgh, he joined the Hudson's Bay Company in 1833 and spent ten years at Moose Factory.
 
From 1846 to 1854 he led, or was second in command of, four Arctic expeditions. He travelled in small boats and on foot over 13,000 miles, averaging over 25 miles a day, and charted 1,700 miles of unknown coastline between the Mackenzie River and Hudson's Bay. Rae adopted many Inuit and Indian techniques for travel and survival. In 1854 he was the first European to bring back information about the fate of the Franklin expedition.
 
Dr. Rae lived here from 1857 to 1860. He was a founding member and first Vice-President of the Hamilton Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art. In the winter of 1859 he is said to have snowshoed from Hamilton to Toronto in seven hours for a dinner engagement.
 
Rae died in London, England on 22 July, 1893, and is buried in Kirkwall, Orkney.