[3][4][5][6] Hardy attended St Ambrose College in the late 1960s, where his interest in biochemistry was encouraged by his biology teacher, Mrs Cox.
[7] He received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Leeds in 1976[8] and his PhD from Imperial College London in 1981[8] for research on dopamine and amino acid neuropharmacology.
[8] He became Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at St. Mary's Hospital, Imperial College London in 1985 and initiated genetic studies of Alzheimer's disease there.
He became Chair of Neuroscience in 2000 and moved to National Institute on Aging, Bethesda, Maryland, as Chief of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics in 2001.
In 2018, Hardy, along with Christian Haass, Bart De Strooper and Michel Goedert, received the Brain Prize for "groundbreaking research on the genetic and molecular basis of Alzheimer's disease.