Platt was born in Elgin, Illinois, and matriculated at California State University, Long Beach, at the age of 14.
After graduating from CSULB at the age of 18, he enrolled in a computer science PhD program at California Institute of Technology.
While a student at Caltech under astronomer Gene Shoemaker, he discovered two asteroids, 3259 Brownlee and 3237 Victorplatt at Palomar Observatory on 25 September 1984.
The reason appears to be that Platt had submitted a patent application for a similar interface design five months prior to Apple's claim.
[3] Platt shared a 2005 Scientific and Technical Achievement Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with Demetri Terzopoulos for their pioneering work in physically-based computer-generated techniques used to simulate realistic cloth in motion pictures.