Rijke was born in Hemmen, (now Overbetuwe municipality), Gelderland. His father, Dirk Rijke, was a pastor. His mother was Elisabeth Pieternella Beausar.

From 1830 Rijke studied physics under Pieter Johannes Uijlenbroek ^[de] at the University of Leiden, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1836. The title of his Ph.D. thesis was "De origine electricitatis voltaicae".^[1]

In 1835 he was appointed professor of physics at the Royal Athenaeum in Maastricht. In 1845 he became extraordinary professor and in 1854 he was promoted to full professor of physics at the University of Leiden.

There he started a physics laboratory with a large collection of scientific instruments. His most important students were H.A. Lorentz and J.D. van der Waals. He retired in 1882, and was succeeded by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes as professor of experimental physics at the University of Leiden.

Rijke became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1863.^[2]

[1]

• Rijke tube

• H.A.M. Snelders, Rijke, Petrus Leonardus (1812-1899), in Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland. (In Dutch).
• List of Ph.D. students of Pieter Rijke
• Vasco Verlaan, P.L. Rijke: Een Bron van degelijkheid., master's thesis, University of Utrecht, 2003 (In Dutch).
• Ph.D. family tree of Pieter Rijke
• Pieter Rijke at the Mathematics Genealogy Project