Dr. Albert Burke was born in 1919 to Russian immigrants Samuel Edwards Burkenblit and Helen Hamburg. He later shortened his last name Burkenblit to Burke. Burke received his B.A. and M.A. in Earth Science from UCLA. He completed graduate work at Harvard in 1951, and received his doctorate in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania. After going to Yale in 1952 to teach geography, he married Ruth C. Burke, a research scientist at Yale, with whom he had two children.

He lived in several countries throughout his life, including Russia, China, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Latin America. He and his wife also lived amongst native people in the American Southwest. He spoke a wide range of languages including French, German, Russian, Spanish, Italian, and Bulgarian.

Before gaining national recognition as a conservationist and pioneer of educational television, the first show of Burke's television career, "This is Your World," appeared in 1951 in New Haven, Connecticut. A national educational initiative with the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the Educational Television and Radio Center, in 1956-1957 gave him the opportunity to host "Geography for Decision" as he was serving at the American Institute of Resource Economics. His long relationship with NBC began with this initiative, and in 1957 he became Educational Broadcasting consultant for the company.

He later became known nationally for his Sunday night commentaries called "A Way of Thinking" and later a series called "Survival." Burke's most popular series "Probe--with Dr. Albert Burke" went on air in 1962. Burke published his book called Enough Good Men: A Way of Thinking in 1962, which stemmed from environmentalist ideas of his many shows. Burke died in 1999.