 He earned a bachelor's degree "summa cum laude" in mathematics from Yale University (1960), and a Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1963).He was an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1963 to 1965 and an acting associate professor there before joining the MIT faculty as an associate professor in 1966.Diamond was promoted to full professor in 1970, served as head of the Department of Economics in 1985–86 and was named an Institute Professor in 1997.