He is Professor of Mathematics at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) and at Imperial College London.

[2] He attended the Collège Claparède Geneva where he received his high school diploma in 1994.

He entered a school science competition with sound editing software that was developed into Amadeus,[12] and later continued to maintain the software in addition to his academic work; it continued to be widely used as of 2020[update].

[11] He then attended the University of Geneva, where he obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics in July 1998, Master of Science in Physics in October 1998 and PhD in Physics under the supervision of Jean-Pierre Eckmann in November 2001.

[12] Hairer holds Austrian and British nationality, and speaks French, German and English; he married fellow mathematician Li Xue-Mei in 2003.