Bondy received his Ph.D. in
graph theory from the
University of Oxford in 1969. His advisor was
Dominic Welsh. Between 1969 and 1994, Bondy was
Professor of Graph Theory at the
University of Waterloo in Canada, and then, until his retirement, at
Université Lyon 1 in France. From 1976, he was managing editor, and, between 1979 and 2004, co-editor-in-chief (together with
U. S. R. Murty) of
Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B. Throughout his career, Bondy has (co-)authored over 100 publications with 51 co-authors, including the widely influential textbook
Graph Theory with Applications (with
U. S. R. Murty), and supervised 12 Ph.D. students. Bondy was dismissed from his tenured position at the University of Waterloo in 1995, after 25 years in which he had been a major contributor to the renown of the University's Department of Combinatorics and Optimization. The reasons for his dismissal centered on ''"Bondy's acceptance of a teaching post in France, and the acceptability of someone who is on UW's faculty payroll holding a full-time job elsewhere."
Protesting the decision, Paul Erdős returned his honorary doctorate to the University of Waterloo, and Vašek Chvátal resigned from his position of Adjunct Professor'' at the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization. ==Personal life==