Guillaume Frédéric Pijper was born in Berkhout (province of North Holland) in 1893. He was one of six children of Dr. Fredrik Pijper, minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in Berkhout, and Maria Petronella van Wijk. Four years later the Pijper family moved to Leiden, where Dr. F. Pijper had been appointed professor in the history of Christianity and Christian doctrine. G.F. Pijper studied Malay, several Indonesian languages and Semitic languages in Leiden. His most prominent teachers were Professor C. Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936), the famous orientalist and government’s adviser, and Professor P.S. van Ronkel (1870-1954). He took his doctorate in 1924 with his thesis on Malay manuscripts of an Arabic religious text attributed to ' Abd Allāh Ibn Salām'. From 1920 until 1925, Pijper was teacher of oriental languages at the Dutch School for Missionaries (Nederlandse Zending School) in Oegstgeest.

In 1925 Pijper joined the civil service in the Dutch East Indies. In the years 1931-1934 and 1936-1937, he served as assistant adviser on indigenous affairs to the government, in particular religious (Islamic) affairs, from 1937 on as adviser. In 1934-1935 Pijper was granted a study leave to Arabia, Egypt, Palestina and Syria. As an islamologist, Pijper continued the activities and (field) research his mentor Snouck Hurgronje had undertaken in Indonesia at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first years of the twentieth century.

In 1940, Pijper was appointed extraordinary professor at the Faculty of Arts in Batavia (Jakarta), besides his activities as government’s advisor. It is worthy to note that while in Indonesia, Pijper was the representative of the Royal Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- and Volkenkunde). After de Japanese invasion in 1942, Pijper was interned in a war camp in Java. After the Japanese capitulation in 1945 and his release from the war camp, Pijper resumed his activities in Batavia, interrupted by a stay of several months in 1947-1948 in the Netherlands. In 1951 he returned permanently to the Netherlands and settled in Blaricum, later in Amsterdam. In 1953 he was appointed teacher at the University of Amsterdam, from 1955 on extraordinary professor of Arabic, Islam and semitic languages. He held his inaugural lecture on ‘Islam and The Netherlands’. Pijper died in Amsterdam in 1988.