degrees in mathematics and in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1975, and a PhD in theoretical astrophysics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1981.

In 2004, he was appointed Professeur des Universités in the Physics Department of the École Normale Supérieure de Paris.

At Oxford, he taught astrophysical gas dynamics, general relativity, and supervised postdoctoral researchers and students.

[7] He has made discoveries related to gravitational instability in the interstellar medium and several contributions to the theory of thermal processes in magnetised dilute plasmas.

[3][8] According to the Shaw selection committee the "discovery and elucidation of the magnetorotational instability (MRI)" solved the previously "elusive" problem of accretion, a widespread phenomenon in astrophysics and "provides what to this day remains the only viable mechanism for the outward transfer of angular momentum in accretion disks".

In 2023 he was awarded the Nick Kylafis Lectureship[13] "All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License."