He was born in Constantinople and later on came in Athens because of the ethnic tensions in Turkey during the 1950s and 1960s. Savas Dimopoulos studied as an undergraduate at the University of Houston. He went to the University of Chicago and had he was next to Yoichiro Nambu for his doctoral dissertation. After completing the Ph.D. in 1979, he briefly went to Columbia University before taking a faculty position at Stanford University in 1980. During 1981 and 1982 he was also affiliated with the University of Michigan, Harvard University and the University of California, Santa Barbara. From 1994 to 1997 he was on leave from Stanford University and was employed by CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research.

S. Dimopoulos is well-known for his work on constructing theories beyond the Standard Model, which are currently being searched for and tested at particle colliders and in other experiments. His most famous work was on the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) which he proposed in 1981 jointly with Howard Georgi. He also proposed the theory of large extra dimensions, together with Nima Arkani-Hamed and Gia Dvali. For the proposal of these theories and developments in the field of theoretical particle physics he won the Sakurai award in 2006.

Recently, he acquired a role … which is very far from his philosophy, but so close to the subject of science. He participates along with four other world-famous scientists in the documentary «Particle Fever», with subject, what else; the agony of science against the mysteries of nature as a result, of course, of the experiment at CERN.