He received his BS from Wake Forest College in 1959 and his PhD from Princeton University in 1962 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "On certain homogeneous complex manifolds", under the supervision of Donald Spencer.^[1] Afterwards, he held positions at University of California, Berkeley (1962–1967) and Princeton University (1967–1972).^{[citation needed]} Griffiths was a professor of mathematics at Harvard University from 1972 to 1983.^[2] He was then a Provost and James B. Duke Professor of Mathematics at Duke University from 1983 to 1991.^[2] From 1991 to 2003, he was the Director of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey.^[2] He remained as part of the Faculty of Mathematics at the IAS until June 2009, after which he has been emeritus at the IAS.^[2] He has published on algebraic geometry, differential geometry, geometric function theory, and the geometry of partial differential equations.

Griffiths serves as the Chair of the Science Initiative Group.^[2] He is co-author, with Joe Harris, of Principles of Algebraic Geometry, a well-regarded textbook on complex algebraic geometry.^[3]

Griffiths was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1979 and the American Philosophical Society in 1992.^[4][5] In 2008 he was awarded the Wolf Prize (jointly with Deligne and Mumford)^[6] and the Brouwer Medal.^[7] In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.^[8] Moreover, in 2014 Griffiths was awarded the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement by the American Mathematical Society.^[9] Also in 2014, Griffiths was awarded the Chern Medal for lifetime devotion to mathematics and outstanding achievements.

• Griffiths, P. A. (1962). "On certain homogeneous complex manifolds". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 48 (5): 780–783. Bibcode:1962PNAS...48..780G. doi:10.1073/pnas.48.5.780. PMC 220851. PMID 16590943.
• Griffiths, P. A. (1963). "Some remarks on automorphisms, analytic bundles, and embeddings of complex algebraic varieties". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 49 (6): 817–820. Bibcode:1963PNAS...49..817G. doi:10.1073/pnas.49.6.817. PMC 300013. PMID 16591103.
• Griffiths, Phillip A. (1963). "On the differential geometry of homogeneous vector bundles". Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 109: 1–34. doi:10.1090/s0002-9947-1963-0162248-5. MR 0162248.
• Griffiths, P. A. (1966). "The residue calculus and some transcendental results in algebraic geometry, I". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 55 (5): 1303–1309. Bibcode:1966PNAS...55.1303G. doi:10.1073/pnas.55.5.1303. PMC 224316. PMID 16591357.
• Griffiths, P. A. (1966). "The residue calculus and some transcendental results in algebraic geometry, II". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 55 (6): 1392–1395. Bibcode:1966PNAS...55.1392G. doi:10.1073/pnas.55.6.1392. PMC 224330. PMID 16578635.
• Griffiths, P. A. (1966). "Some results on locally homogeneous complex manifolds". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 56 (2): 413–416. Bibcode:1966PNAS...56..413G. doi:10.1073/pnas.56.2.413. PMC 224387. PMID 16591369.
• "A transcendental method in algebraic geometry" (PDF). Actes, Congrès intern. math. 1970. Vol. Tome 1. pp. 113–119.
• Griffiths, Phillip A. (1970). "Periods of integrals on algebraic manifolds". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 76 (2): 228–296. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1970-12444-2. MR 0258824.
• Deligne, Pierre; Griffiths, Phillip; Morgan, John; Sullivan, Dennis (1975). "Real homotopy theory of Kähler manifolds". Inventiones Mathematicae. 29 (3): 245–274. Bibcode:1975InMat..29..245D. doi:10.1007/BF01389853. MR 0382702. S2CID 1357812.
• with Joe Harris: Griffiths, Phillip; Harris, Joe (1977). "A Poncelet theorem in space". Comment. Math. Helv. 52: 145–160. doi:10.1007/bf02567361. S2CID 119686396.
• with S. S. Chern: "Abel's Theorem and Webs" (PDF). Jber. D. Dt. Math.-Verein. 80: 13–110. 1978.
• Griffiths, Phillip A. (1979). "Complex analysis and algebraic geometry". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 1 (4): 595–626. doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-1979-14640-8. MR 0532551.
• Griffiths, Phillip A. (1982). "Poincaré and algebraic geometry". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.). 6 (2): 147–159. doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-1982-14967-9. MR 0640942.

• Mumford–Tate groups and domains: their geometry and arithmetic, with Mark Green and Matt Kerr, Princeton University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-691-154251^[10]
• Selected Works of Phillip A. Griffiths with Commentary. Vol. 4 vols. American Mathematical Soc. 2003. in pbk: Griffiths, Phillip; Cornalba, Maurizio (2003). vol. 1. ISBN 0-8218-2086-9. Griffiths, Phillip; Cornalba, Maurizio (2003). vol. 2. ISBN 0-8218-2087-7. Griffiths, Phillip; Cornalba, Maurizio (2003). vol. 3. ISBN 0-8218-2088-5. Griffiths, Phillip; Cornalba, Maurizio (2003). vol. 4. ISBN 0-8218-2089-3.
• Exterior differential systems and Euler-Lagrange partial differential equations, with Robert Bryant and Daniel Grossman, University of Chicago Press, 2003, ISBN 0-226-07793-4 cloth; ISBN 0-226-07794-2^[11]
• Introduction to Algebraic Curves, American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 1989, ISBN 0821845306
• Differential Systems and Isometric Embeddings, with Gary R. Jensen, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1987, ISBN 0-691-08429-7^[12]
• Topics in Transcendental Algebraic Geometry, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1984, ISBN 0691083355
• Exterior Differential Systems and the Calculus of Variations, Birkhäuser, Boston, 1983, ISBN 3764331038
• Rational Homotopy Theory and Differential Forms, with John W. Morgan, Birkhäuser, Boston, 1981, ISBN 3764330414^[13]
• Principles of Algebraic Geometry, with Joe Harris, Wiley, New York, 1978, ISBN 0471327921^[14]
• Entire Holomorphic Mappings in One and Several Complex Variables, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1976, ISBN 0691081719^[15]

• Phillip Griffiths at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Science Initiative Group page