Paul R. Gray was born on December 8, 1942, in Jonesboro, Arkansas. He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Arizona, Tucson, in 1963, 1965, and 1969, respectively.

In 1971 Dr. Gray joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS), at U.C. Berkeley, where he is now a professor emeritus. He has held several administrative posts at Berkeley, including executive vice chancellor and provost (2000-2006), dean of the College of Engineering (1996-2000), and chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (1990-93). His research interests have included bipolar and MOS circuit design, electro-thermal interactions in integrated circuits, device modeling, telecommunications circuits, and analog-digital interfaces in VLSI systems. Prior to joining U.C. Berkeley, he was with the Research and Development Laboratory at Fairchild Semiconductor (1969-1971) in Palo Alto, California. He is the co-author of a widely used college textbook on analog integrated circuit design.

Dr. Gray is a member and former Councillor of the National Academy of Engineering, and serves on several corporate boards, and currently is a member of the board of trustees and Interim President of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Dr. Gray is a fellow of the IEEE, and has served as president of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Council and as editor of the IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits. He has received several technical achievement and education awards, including the IEEE Solid State Circuits award (1994) the IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal (2004), and the IEEE Robert Noyce Medal (2008). He has been awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Bucharest in Romania (1999) and from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland (2006).

Dr. Gray is married and has two grown sons and two grandsons.