Saul Perlmutter graduated from Harvard magna cum laude in 1981 and received his PhD from UC Berkeley in 1986. He joined the UC Berkeley Physics Department in 2004. He is also an astrophysicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and leader of the international Supernova Cosmology Project. This project, along with the High-z Supernova Search, discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe. He is also principal investigator of the SuperNova/Acceleration Probe (SNAP) project.

Awards
In 2006 he shared the Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the Feltrinelli International Prize in the Physical and Mathematical Sciences. This prize is awarded once every five years by Italy's Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. In 2002 Perlmutter won the Department of Energy's E. O. Lawrence Award in Physics. In 2003 he was awarded the California Scientist of the Year Award, and in 2005 Perlmutter won the John Scott Award and the Padua Prize. Perlmutter was also elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2003. In 1996, he received the American Astronomical Society’s Henri Chretien Award.

Perlmutter has also written popular articles for Sky and Telescope magazine and has appeared in recent Public Broadcasting System and BBC documentaries on astronomy and cosmology.