[1] Shiffman received in 1964 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) a bachelor's degree and in 1968 from the University of California, Berkeley a PhD under Shiing-Shen Chern with thesis On the removal of singularities in several complex variables.
Moore Instructor from 1968 to 1970 and at Yale University an assistant professor from 1970 to 1973.
He has held visiting positions in the US, France, Germany, and Sweden.
[1] For the two academic years 1973–1975 Shiffman was a Sloan Research Fellow.
He was elected a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012.