Robert Brayton received the BSEE degree from Iowa State University in 1956, and the Ph.D. degree in mathematics from MIT in 1961.

He was a member of the Mathematical Sciences Department of the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center until he joined the EECS Department at Berkeley in 1987. He held the Edgar L. and Harold H. Buttner Endowed Chair and is currently the Cadence Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering at Berkeley.

He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the IEEE and the AAAS. He received the 1991 IEEE CAS Technical Achievement Award, the 1971 IEEE Guilleman-Cauer award, the 1987 ISCAS Darlington award. In 2000, he received the 2000 CAS Golden Jubilee and the IEEE Millennium Medals, the 2002 Iowa State University Marston Medal, and in 2006, the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore, the ACM Kanallakis and the EDAA Lifetime Achievement Awards. In 2007 he received the EDAC/CEDA Phil Kaufman Award and in 2009, the SIGDA/CEDA A. Richard Newton Technical Impact Award. He has authored over 450 technical papers, and 10 books in the areas of the analysis of nonlinear networks, simulation and optimization of electrical circuits, logic synthesis, and formal design verification.