 Born in Tel Aviv, Shamir received a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in mathematics from Tel Aviv University in 1973 and obtained his Master of Science (MSc) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degrees in Computer Science from the Weizmann Institute in 1975 and 1977 respectively.After a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Warwick, he did research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1977–1980 before returning to be a member of the faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Weizmann Institute.Starting from 2006, he is also an invited professor at École Normale Supérieure in Paris.