Shlomo Havlin was born in Jerusalem, Israel (then part of The British Mandate of Palestine). He is named after his grandfather Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Havlin, founder of the Torat Emet yeshiva in Hebron. He is second cousins with Prof. Shlomo Zalman Havlin, founder of the Department of Information Studies and Librarianship at Bar-Ilan University. He graduated from Bar-Ilan and Tel-Aviv Universities with Highest Distinction. He obtained an academic position at Bar-Ilan University in 1972 where he became a full Professor in Physics at 1984. During 1978–1979 he was a Royal Society Visiting Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, where he worked with Professors William Cochran and Roger Cowley. In 1984 he became the Chair of the Physics Department at Bar-Ilan University until 1988. During 1983–1984 and 1989–1991, Havlin was a visiting scientist at NIH where he collaborated much with Drs. George Weiss, Ralph Nossal and other members of NIH. During 1984–1985 and 1991–1992 he was a visiting professor at Boston University, where he collaborated with Professor H. Eugene Stanley and many others. Between 2016 and 2019 Havlin was a visiting professor in Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he collaborated with Profs. Misako and Hideki Takayasu.