He received his BS from Wake Forest College in 1959 and his PhD from Princeton University in 1962 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "On certain homogeneous complex manifolds", under the supervision of Donald Spencer.

[3] Griffiths was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1979 and the American Philosophical Society in 1992.

[4][5] In 2008 he was awarded the Wolf Prize (jointly with Deligne and Mumford)[6] and the Brouwer Medal.

[8] Moreover, in 2014 Griffiths was awarded the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement by the American Mathematical Society.

[9] Also in 2014, Griffiths was awarded the Chern Medal for lifetime devotion to mathematics and outstanding achievements.