Blaes was born April 30, 1961. He completed a BSc with first class honors in astrophysics at Queen Mary University of London in August 1983. He earned a MPhil in physics, cum laude, from the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in October 1985. He completed a PhD in physics at SISSA in September 1986. His doctoral advisor was Marek Abramowicz [ pl ; sv ]. Blaes' dissertation was titled The Stability of Thick Accretion Disks. Blaes was the Chaim Weizmann Research Fellow in Theoretical Physics at California Institute of Technology from October 1, 1986, to September 30, 1989. He was a research associate at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics from October 12, 1989, to August 31, 1993.