Evans was born,
Orange, New South Wales. In 1982 he obtained his bachelor's degree from the
University of Sydney and in 1987 his Ph.D. from the
University of Cambridge under
Martin T. Barlow with thesis
Local Properties of Markov Families and Stochastic Processes Indexed by a Totally Disconnected Field. From 1987 to 1991 he was an assistant professor of statistics at the
University of California, Berkeley. In 1987–1989 he was a Whyburn Research Instructor in mathematics at the University of Virginia. In the department of statistics, UC Berkeley, he became an associate professor in 1991 and a full professor in 1995. In 1999 at UC Berkeley he was given a joint appointment as a professor in both mathematics and statistics, a position he now continues to hold. He was an associate editor from 1993 to 2000 for
Stochastic Processes and their Applications, from 1994 to 2000 for
Annals of Probability, and from 2001 to 2003 for
Probability Theory and Related Fields. == Honors and awards ==