Jean-Pierre Bourguignon has been director of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques since 1994. Director of research at France’s National Center of Scientific Research (Centre national de la recherche scientifique — CNRS), he is also professor at the École Polytechnique. A member of the scientific council of several institutions of international standing, he is also editor of a number of mathematical journals.

He holds an engineering degree from the École Polytechnique and a Ph.D. in mathematical sciences from the University Paris VII. He is member of the Academia Europaea and a foreign member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences. In 1997, he received the Prix du Rayonnement Français in Mathematical Sciences and Physics and in 2005 was elected honorary member of the London Mathematical Society. In 2007, he became President of the Ethics Committee of the CNRS.