Alexandros Nehamas graduated from Athens College in 1964 and received a BA from Swarthmore College in 1967 and a PhD from Princeton University in 1971. He taught at the University of Pittsburgh (1971-1986) and the University of Pennsylvania (1986-1989) and in 1989 returned to Princeton as Carpenter Professor of Humanities, Philosophy, and Comparative Literature.
He has also taught in the Mills and Sather Chairs at the University of California/Berkeley and has lectured at several universities such as Yale and Edinburgh.
At Princeton, he has served as President of the Humanities Council, Director of the Greek Studies Program (Academy of Athens Award, 2000), as well as Founding Director of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts.
He is an Honorary Doctor of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the International Hellenic University and the School of Fine Arts of the National Technical University of Athens. He was President of the American Philosophical Association and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
He has been awarded, among others, the Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities of Princeton University, the Premio Internazionale Nietzsche and the Mellon Foundation Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities.
He has been honored with the Brigadier General of the Order of the Phoenix of the Hellenic Republic.
In 2003 he was honored by the Academy of Athens for his contribution to Greek Studies and in 2018 he was elected a regular member of the Academy.