Robin Hartshorne studied algebraic geometry with Oscar Zariski and David Mumford at Harvard, and will J.-P. Serre and A. Grothendieck in Paris. After receiving his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1963, Hartshrne became a Junior Fellow at Harvard, then taught there for several years. In 1972 he moved to California where he is now Professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Residues and Duality(1966), Foundations of Projective Geometry (1967), Ample Subvarieties of Algebraic Varieties (1970), and numerous research articles. His current research interest is the geometry of projective varieties and vector bundles. He has been a visiting professor at the College de France and at Kyoto University, where he gave his lectures in French and in Japanese, respectively.

Professor Hartshrne is married to Edie Churchill, educator, musician and therapist, and has two sons and one daughter. He has travelled widely, speaks several foreign languages, and is an experienced mountain climber. He is also an accomplished musician, playing flute, piano, and traditional Japanese music on the shakuhachi.