He received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Michael Levitt and Martin Karplus for "the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems".

After serving the Israeli Army (final rank Captain), Warshel attended the Technion, Haifa, where he received his BSc degree in chemistry, summa cum laude, in 1966.

Subsequently, he earned both MSc and PhD degrees in Chemical Physics (in 1967 and 1969, respectively), with Shneior Lifson at Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel.

[10] As part of Shenzhen's 13th Five-Year Plan funding research in emerging technologies and opening "Nobel laureate research labs",[11] in April 2017 he opened the Warshel Institute for Computational Biology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen campus.

[13] He is a member of many scientific organisations, most importantly: Arieh Warshel made major contributions in introducing computational methods for structure–function correlation of biological molecules, pioneering and co-pioneering programs, methods and key concepts for detailed computational studies of functional properties of biological molecules using Cartesian-based force field programs,[28][29] the combined Quantum Chemistry/Molecular mechanics (i.e., QM/MM) method for simulating enzymatic reactions,[30] the first molecular dynamics simulation of a biological process,[31][32] microscopic electrostatic models for proteins,[33] free energy perturbation in proteins[34] and other key advances.