He enrolled at Rice University in 1962 as a physics major, but (with the help of Jim Douglas) entered the graduate mathematics program in 1964.

His advisor Eldon Dyer arranged, with the support of Michael Atiyah, a one-year fellowship at the University of Oxford, followed by a year in Princeton at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Using work of Dennis Sullivan, he focused attention on certain ring-spectra parametrized by one-dimensional formal group laws over a field, which generalize classical topological K-theory.

Their groups of multiplicative automorphisms are essentially the units in certain p-adic division algebras, and thus have deep connections to local class field theory.

They spent a year at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics in Moscow on a US National Academy of Sciences fellowship, where he was influenced by contact with Vladimir Arnold, Israel Gelfand, Yuri I. Manin, and Novikov.