Massimo Inguscio graduated from the University of Pisa in 1972. He then did postdoctoral research at the Scuola Normale until 1976. Upon completion of his education, he joined the University of Pisa, eventually becoming associate professor. In1986, he became full professor at the Federico II University of Naples. Since 1991, he has been at the University of Florence. There, he co-founded the European Laboratory for Non Linear Spectroscopy, and served as its director from 1998 to 2004.

He is a Fellow of OSA, APS, and EOS. He received OSA’s Herbert Walther Award in 2014 “for groundbreaking experiments in modern atomic, molecular and optical (AMO) physics, from spectroscopy of metastable helium to Anderson localization of ultra-cold atoms, and for his scientific leadership worldwide.”