Dr. Arthur grew up in a small college town in the Shenandoah Valley and was awarded a Virginia Scholarship to attend the University of Virginia. After college, he joined the University of Virginia Department of Neurosurgery where he did research on brain aneurysms. He continued this research throughout medical school, obtaining his medical degree from the University of Virginia in 1998. He did his internship and residency at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. While there he also completed a Masters in Public Health with a focus on clinical trials methodology, graduating Summa Cum Laude in 2002.

After finishing his residency he was recruited to Memphis where he joined the Semmes Murphey Clinic and the University of Tennessee Department of Neurosurgery. During his first two years in Memphis, he completed a fellowship in Endovascular and Open Vascular Neurosurgery. He was one of the earliest neurosurgeons in the country to develop a busy practice in both open cerebrovascular surgery and endovascular neurosurgery. This practice now includes six other attending physicians and one of the most sought-after fellowships in cerebrovascular neurosurgery in the world. He has a strong interest in managing neurovascular disease in both healthy and very sick patients. He is actively engaged in several areas of research to improve the treatment of patients with cerebrovascular diseases, such as aneurysms and stroke. He was the international principal investigator of WEB-IT and has been instrumental in studying and teaching the usage of the woven endobridge (WEB device) to treat cerebral aneurysms. He currently is the Principal Investigator on six other multicenter international clinical trials.

Dr. Arthur is the Past-President of the Society for Neurointerventional Surgery and currently serves as the Treasurer of the AANS/CNS Cerebrovascular Section, the Chair of the NREF Education Committee, and the Chair of the AANS Scientific Program Committee.

He is married to Shannon Mitchell Arthur, and they live happily in Memphis with their 3 young children, 2 dogs, and 3 cats.