Toomre received B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in aeronautics and astronautics in 1963, and then went to England as a Marshall Scholar to receive a Ph.D. from Trinity College, University of Cambridge in applied mathematics and theoretical physics in 1967. He joined the New York University mathematics faculty in 1969, and then in 1972 came to the University of Colorado as an associate professor. Since 1975 Toomre has been a professor of astrophysics in APS (Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences) and a fellow of JILA (formerly the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics), University of Colorado, Boulder.
