Demetris Christodoulou was born in Athens in 1951. He studied Physics at Princeton University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1971. He subsequently turned to Mathematics and became Professor of Mathematics, first at the Syracuse University (1985–1987), then at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University (1988–1992), and subsequently at Princeton University (1992–2001). In 2001, he moved to the ETH Zurich, where he served as Professor of Mathematics and Physics until 2017 and has since been Professor Emeritus.
He has been awarded the MacArthur Membership in Mathematics and Physics (1993), the Bocher Prize of the American Mathematical Society (1999), the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences (2011), and the Henri Poincaré Prize of the International Association of Mathematical Physics (2021).
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, and the Academia Europaea, and an External Member of the Cyprus Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts.
