Bio: Michael Hopkins' work has been a major force in algebraic topology and homotopy theory and in its links to elliptic curves and modular forms in number theory, and to string theory in physics.

Michael Hopkins received his B.A. in Mathematics in 1979 at Northwestern University. He was a Rhodes Scholar from 1979 to 1982, and received a D.Phil. in Mathematics from Oxford University under the supervision of Ioan James and a Ph.D. in Mathematics at Northwestern under Mark Mahowald (both in 1984). Hopkins received the awards of Presidential Young Investigator and Alfred P. Sloan Fellow in 1987. In 2001, he received the Veblen Prize in Geometry from the AMS for his work on homotopy theory; and in 2012, he received the National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics for his work on algebraic topology leading to the resolution of the Kervaire invariant problem for framed manifolds.

He joined Princeton University as a postdoctoral fellow, instructor, and assistant professor from 1984 to 1988; professorships at the University of Chicago in 1988 and MIT in 1990. He is currently professor of Mathematics at Harvard University beginning in 2005.