Professor David B. Mumford is Professor Emeritus at Brown and Harvard Universities in both of which he taught for many years. His career has spanned both pure and applied mathematics. His work in pure mathematics centered on moduli problems, the roadmaps of algebraic geometry which have found application in string theory and for which he was awarded the Fields Medal in 1974.

His work in applied mathematics concerns mathematical techniques and statistical models for perception, especially vision, and its neurophysiological embodiment in the brain.

He has been a MacArthur Fellow and President of the International Mathematical Union. He is a member of US National Academy of Science, the American Philosophical Society and the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. He is also a Foreign member of the Royal Society (2008). He shared the Longuet-Higgins Prize from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) in 2005, Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences in 2006, the Steele Prize from the American Mathematical Society in 2007 and the Wolf Prize in Mathematics in 2008.