Born January 1931, to mother Judith Bland, a concert cellist, and father Fred Ewing, a research Chemist at Caltech. He spent his childhood growing up in Pasadena, California. At age 9, his parents separated and he was raised by his mother and maternal grandparents, Reginald Bland and Flavilla Corson.

From 1956 to 1960 he worked on "Project Deal" as a lab technician at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, helping to launch the Explorer Satellite response to Sputnik. His initials BE are etched on the Explorer batteries. He worked on the IBM 709 vacuum tube-based computer, IBM's largest computer at the time.

In 1966, he received his BS in Biology and Mathematics from UC Irvine. In the 1970's he did research and taught entomology classes at UC Berkeley. In 1982, he was one of four founders of a computer firm called GraphOn. He developed all the algorithms for the graphics workstation that was the company's first product. Some of his graphics code was incorporated into early Apple computers.

Both Bland and his father suffered from Huntington's disease. His sister, Carmen Ewing, cared for her brother for 15 years until he passed away from complications of the disease at age 75. A few years before Bland's death, Brian Yandell, someone Bland mentored at UC Berkeley, started a biography of Bland, but never completed it.

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