Howard Carmichael earned a PhD from the University of Waikato in 1977. He joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas in 1983 and moved to the University of Oregon in 1989, where he was Professor of Physics from 1991 to 2001. He is currently a member of the Physics Department at the University of Auckland where he holds the Dan Walls Chair in Theoretical Physics. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the American Physical Society, and the Royal Society of New Zealand. Professor Carmichael was the recipient in 2003 of the Max Born Award of the Optical Society of America.