He received his Ph.D. in 1980 from MIT, where his dissertation supervisor was Morris Halle.
Hayes works in phonology, and is well known for his book Metrical Stress Theory: Principles and Case Studies, a typologically based theory of stress systems. His research interests also include phonetically based phonology and learnability.
In 2009 Hayes was inducted as a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America.[3]
He is married to phonetician Patricia Keating.
Books
(1985) A Metrical Theory of Stress Rules, Garland Press, New York.