Leslie Valiant was educated at King's College, Cambridge; Imperial College, London; and at Warwick University where he received his Ph.D. in computer science in 1974. He is currently T. Jefferson Coolidge Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard, where he has taught since 1982. Before coming to Harvard he had taught at Carnegie-Mellon University, Leeds University, and the University of Edinburgh.
His work has ranged over several areas of theoretical computer science, particularly complexity theory, computational learning, and parallel computation. He also has interests in computational neuroscience, evolution and artificial intelligence.
He received the Nevanlinna Prize at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1986 and the Knuth Award in 1997, and the EATCS award in 2008. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (London) and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA).