Max Tegmark left Sweden in 1990 after receiving his B.Sc. in Physics from the Royal Institute of Technology (he'd earned a B.A. in Economics the previous year at the Stockholm School of Economics). He studied physics at the University of California, Berkeley, earning his M.A. in 1992, and Ph.D. in 1994.

Tegmark then became a research associate with the Max-Planck-Institut für Physik in Munich. In 1996 he headed back to the U.S. as a Hubble Fellow and member of the Institute for Advanced Study,at Princeton University. Several years later, Tegmark became an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received tenure in 2003. He moved to MIT in September 2004.

Tegmark has received numerous awards for his research, including a Packard Fellowship (2001-06), Cottrell Scholar Award (2002-07), and an NSF Career grant (2002-07). His work with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey collaboration on galaxy clustering shared the first prize in Science Magazine's "Breakthrough of the Year: 2003."