Evert Hoek was born in Zimbabwe in southern Africa in 1933 and graduated in mechanical engineering with a B.Sc and an M.Sc from the University of Cape Town in 1957. He became involved in rock mechanics in 1958 when he started working in research on problems of brittle fracture in rock associated with very deep mines in South Africa. His degrees include a Ph.D. from the University of Cape Town, a D.Sc (Engineering) from the University of London, and honorary doctorates from the Universities of Waterloo and Toronto in Canada and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Spain. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), an International Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.

He spent 8 years as a research engineer in the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, 9 years as a Reader and then Professor in the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London, 12 years as a consultant with Golder Associates in Vancouver, Canada, and 6 years as an Industrial Research Professor in the University of Toronto. For the 25 years prior to his retirement in 2018, he worked as an independent consultant on review and consulting boards on civil and mining engineering projects around the world.