Marr生于1945年1月19日，早年就读于剑桥大学，获得数学硕士、神经生理学博士学位，同时还受过神经解剖学、心理学、生物化学等方面的严格训练。他在英国曾从事新皮层、海马，特别是小脑方面的理论研究。1974年访问美国，并应M.Minsky教授之请，留在麻省理工学院开展知觉和记忆方面的研究工作。他从计算机科学的观点出发，熔数学、心理物理学、神经生理学于一炉，首创人的视觉计算理论，从而使视觉研究的面貌为之一新。Marr于1980年11月17日在波士顿病死，享年35岁。他的理论由他创建的一个以博士研究生为主体的研究小组继承、丰富和发展，并由其学生归纳总结为一本计算机视觉领域著作：Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information (ISBN 0-7167-1567-8)，于他后发表。从人工智能杂志1981年第17卷“计算机视觉”专辑中，我们可以清楚地看到这一理论已产生巨大的影响。
他的主要著作包括：
(1969) A theory of cerebellar cortex. J. Physiol., 202:437-470.
(1970) A theory for cerebral neocortex. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 176:161-234.
(1971) Simple memory: a theory for archicortex. Phil. Trans. Royal Soc. London, 262:23-81.
(1974) The computation of lightness by the primate retina. Vision Research, 14:1377-1388.
(1975) Approaches to biological information processing. Science, 190:875-876.
(1976) Early processing of visual information. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B, 275:483-524.
(1976) Cooperative computation of stereo disparity. Science, 194:283-287. (with Tomaso Poggio)
(1976, March) Artificial intelligence: A personal view. Technical Report AIM 355, MIT AI Laboratory, Cambridge, MA.
(1977) Artificial intelligence: A personal view. Artificial Intelligence 9(1), 37–48.
(1977) From understanding computation to understanding neural circuitry. Neurosciences Res. Prog. Bull., 15:470-488. (with Tomaso Poggio)
(1978) Representation and recognition of the spatial organization of three dimensional tructure. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 200:269-294. (with H. K. Nishihara)
(1979) A computational theory of human stereo vision. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 204:301-328. (with Tomaso Poggio)
(1980) Theory of edge detection. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B, 207:187-217. (with E. Hildreth)
(1981) Artificial intelligence: a personal view. In Haugeland, J., ed., Mind Design, chapter 4, pages 129-142. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
(1982) Representation and recognition of the movements of shapes. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 214:501-524. (with L. M. Vaina)
(1982). Vision: A Computational Investigation into the HumanRepresentation and Processing of Visual Information. New York: Freeman.
