[1][2] Michael "Mic" Detlefsen was born on 20 October 1948 in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, U.S.A.[3] He undertook undergraduate studies at Wheaton College, Illinois, obtaining an A.B.

[3][4] He then pursued graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, obtaining his PhD in 1976.

[3][4] Detlefsen began his academic career as an Assistant, and then Associate Professor, at the University of Minnesota, Duluth in 1975.

[4] He held a senior chaire d'excellence with the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) in France from 2007 through 2011.

Detlefsen wrote a number of works on the foundational ideas of the German mathematician David Hilbert, and other major nineteenth and twentieth century foundational thinkers including Bernard Bolzano, L. E. J. Brouwer, Alonzo Church, Richard Dedekind, Gottlob Frege, Kurt Gödel, Moritz Pasch, Henri Poincaré and Bertrand Russell.