Manjul Bhargava was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and grew up in Long Island, New York.  He received his A.B. summa cum laude in Mathematics from Harvard University in 1996, and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2001.  After graduating from Princeton, Dr. Bhargava held visiting positions at Harvard, MSRI, and the Institute for Advanced Study.  In 2003, within two years of his Ph.D., Dr. Bhargava was appointed Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University, making him one of the youngest tenured full professors in Princeton's history.

Dr. Bhargava is the recipient of numerous honors and prizes for his work, such as the AMS-MAA-SIAM Morgan Prize (1997), the Hasse Prize for Exposition from the Mathematical Association of America (2003), the AMS Blumenthal Award for the Advancement of Research in Pure Mathematics (2004), the Clay Research Award (2005), and the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize (2005).  In 2002 Popular Science magazine named him to its "Brilliant 10" list of scientists who are shaking up their fields.

Besides pursuing mathematics, Dr. Bhargava is also an accomplished musician and performs extensively on the tabla, a classical Indian percussion instrument.  He also maintains a strong interest in linguistics and its various connections to mathematics and music.