Philip Bunker was educated at Battersea Grammar School in Streatham. He received a bachelors degree at Kings College in 1962 and earned a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry from Cambridge University in 1965, advised by H.C. Longuet-Higgins. The subject of his Ph.D. thesis was 
the spectrum of the dimethylacetylene molecule and its torsional barrier. During Bunker's Ph.D. work in 1963, Longuet-Higgins
published the paper that introduced molecular symmetry groups consisting of feasible
nuclear permutations and permutation-inversions.
Under the guidance of Longuet-Higgins, Bunker applied these new symmetry ideas and introduced the notations G and G for the molecular symmetry groups of 
dimethylacetylene and ferrocene, respectively. After 
obtaining his Ph.D. degree, he was a postdoctoral fellow with Jon T. Hougen in the 
spectroscopy group of Gerhard Herzberg at the National Research Council of Canada. 
He then spent his entire career at the National Research Council of Canada, eventually 
rising to the position of principal research officer in 1997.