Born in Haifa, Israel, Deutsch studied physics at Cambridge and Oxford Universities. After several years at the University of Texas at Austin, he returned to Oxford, where he now lives and works. Since 1999 Deutsch has been a non-stipendiary Visiting Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, where he is a founder member of the Centre for Quantum Computation at the Clarendon Laboratory.
Deutsch is the recipient of the Fourth International Award on Quantum Communication (2002), the Institute of Physics Paul Dirac Prize and Medal (1998), the Dirac Medal and Prize of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (2017), and the Micius Quantum Prize (2018). He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society.