Griffiths is, since 1991, the director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Previously he has been a professor at the universities of Princeton, Harvard, and Duke.
He is also at present Secretary of the International Mathematical Union.
Griffiths’ scientific work treats the theory of complex manifolds, and he has made fundamental contributions
to this theory.
Particularly well known is his development of the theory of Hodge structures.
He was one of the first to study systematically variations of Hodge structures,
and in this context a central concept is Griffiths transversality.
Another important contribution is the construction of the socalled intermediate Jacobians.
Griffiths’ work is central and has strongly influenced the development of algebraic geometry.
Some of his results are direct generalizations - in a modern language – of Abel’s work on algebraic
functions.
