Anthony M. Trozzolo earned his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Illinois Institute of Technology in 1950. He received his Master of Science degree in 1957 and his doctoral degree in chemistry, in 1960, from the University of Chicago, Illinois. In 1959, he joined the Bell Telephone Laboratories, New Jersey, where he worked until 1975.

He joined the University of Notre Dame faculty in 1975 as C. L. Huisking Professor of Chemistry. Later he became C. L. Huisking Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. While teaching at Notre Dame he received several honors and distinctions. In 1963, he was elected fellow of the AAAS, in 1962 of the American Institute of Chemists, and in 2000 fellow of the Inter-American Photochemical Society. He was the associate editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society from 1975 until 1976 and editor of Chemical Reviews for 7 years, from 1977 until 1984. Trustee of the Gordon Research Conferences and named an American Chemical Society fellow in 2011. Trozollo received Distinguished Alumnus Award from Illinois Institute of Technology in 2009 and The University of Chicago in 2012.

Trozollo's research area has been mainly the creation and detection of reactive intermediates. His methodology involved low-temperature photochemistry and solid-state photochemistry. In addition, he has also conducted research in the following fields: photo-stabilization of polymers, dye lasers, singlet molecular oxygen, charge-transfer complexes, molecular magnets, and superconducting intercalation complexes.