Matt Strassler

Matthew J. Strassler is a theoretical physicist, science communicator, and educator known for the cascading gauge theory.

Education
Strassler studied at Simon's Rock College and Princeton University, and further obtained his Ph.D from Stanford University under the supervision of Michael Peskin. During his collegiate career he also performed concerts.

Teaching and scholarly positions
Strassler was a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in 2002. From 2000 until 2002 he taught at the University of Pennsylvania, and then moved to the University of Washington until 2007. He left to a professorship at Rutgers University until 2013. In 2013 he was a visiting scholar at Harvard, and in 2015, was an associate in the Physics Department.

Scholarly publications
Strassler's scholarly publications has ranked h-factor of 44 as of May 2024 according to INSPIRE-HEP and of 51 according to Google Scholar. His publication, "Supergravity and a confining gauge theory: duality cascades and χSB-resolution of naked singularities", co-written with Igor Klebanov for the Journal of High Energy Physics in 2000, developed the cascading gauge theory. His particle physics article "Echoes of a hidden valley at hadron colliders" (2006), co-written with Kathryn Zurek, appeared in Physics Letters B.

Science writing
Strassler's physics-oriented blog, Of Particular Significance, often includes reality-checks on mainstream media coverage of physics news. He has written for such outlets as New Scientist. His book Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean was published in March 2024, by Basic Books.

Accolades
Strassler was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2007 "[f]or work extending the AdS/CFT gravity/gauge duality to QCD-like confining theories, and for insights into novel aspects of the physics of strongly coupled supersymmetric theories.