About Andy

Andrew Strominger is the Gwill E. York Professor of Physics and the Director of the Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature at Harvard University. He is an accomplished and renowned theoretical physicist who has made groundbreaking contributions to quantum gravity and string theory. These include his seminal work on Calabi-Yau compactification and topology change in string theory, and on the stringy origin of black hole entropy.

In recognition of his accomplishments, Strominger has been awarded numerous prizes, fellowships, and honorary professorships. His most recent awards include the Klein Medal from the Swedish Royal Academy and the 2014 Dirac Medal from the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, which he received for his contributions to the origin, development, and further understanding of string theory. Furthermore, he received the prestigious Physics Frontiers Breakthrough Prize from the Milner Foundation along with colleague Cumrun Vafa in 2014. This award was bestowed upon the pair in honor of their “numerous deep and groundbreaking contributions to quantum field theory, quantum gravity, string theory and geometry.” The Foundation also recognized their “joint statistical derivation of the Bekenstein-Hawking area-entropy relation unified the laws of thermodynamics with the laws of black hole dynamics and revealed the holographic nature of quantum spacetime.”

Strominger completed his undergraduate studies at Harvard before attending the University of California, Berkeley for his Masters. He received his PhD from MIT in 1982 under thesis advisor Roman Jackiw. Prior to joining Harvard as a professor in 1997, he held a faculty position at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of over 200 publications.