In 1979, he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, the most famous
academic chair in the world(the second holder was Sir Isaac Newton, also a member of the Royal Society),
Two years later, Isaac Barrow, Lucasian professor of mathematics, who had transmitted
Newton's De Analysi to John Collins in London, resigned the chair to devote himself to divinity and recommended Newton to succeed him.
He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge,
a member of the Center for Theoretical Studies, University of Miami, and spent the last decade of his life at Florida State University.