Kuzmin completed his undergraduate studies in 1961 at Moscow State University and his PhD in 1971 at Lebedev Institute.

In 1985, his influential work with Valery Rubakov and Mikhail Shaposhnikov estimated the rate of anomalous electroweak process that violated baryon number conservation in the cosmic plasma of the early universe.

[2] In 1999 the Russian Academy of Sciences awarded Kuzmin and Rubakov the Friedmann Prize "for a series of works on the formation of the baryon asymmetry of the universe".

In 2003, he received the Institute for Nuclear Research Markov Prize for his contributions to neutrino physics.

[4] In 2006, he received the Pomeranchuk Prize "for his pioneering work on baryon-number violating processes, baryogenesis, and on the fundamental properties of high-energy cosmic rays", together with Howard Georgi.