Matthew Schwartz promoted to Full Professor

May 15, 2015
Matthew Schwartz promoted to Full Professor

The Physics Department is delighted to announce the promotion of Matthew Schwartz to Professor of Physics with tenure. Matt received his B.A. in Mathematics and Biophysics and M.A. in Mathematics from University of Pennsylvania in 1998. He went to Princeton, where he received his Ph.D. in 2003. After doing postdocs at Berkeley and at Johns Hopkins, he joined Harvard as an Assistant Professor in 2008.


Professor Schwartz has worked on a broad range of theoretical topics in Particle Physics. His recent works range from formal studies of the structure of Quantum Field Theory to phenomenological work related to the Large Hadron Collider. In the latter, he worked on applications of Effective Field Theory to make precise prediction of the Standard Model measurements performed at the LHC, and on studies of substructures inside hadronic jets. He even joined the ATLAS Collaboration, one of the two large experiments at the LHC, as a Short Term Associate to work directly on data analysis based on his theoretical ideas.


Professor Schwartz has overhauled the way Quantum Field Theory is taught at Harvard. Students from both Harvard and MIT flock to his QFT course, Physics 253a, despite his reputation for giving hard homework and even harder exams. He has written a textbook, Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model, which is praised highly by professors and students alike, and is fast becoming a standard textbook on QFT. At the introductory level, Matt is working with Professor Howard Georgi and Dr. David Morin to bring the Physics 15 series to the 21st century. We hope to report on the progress of their effort in the next year’s newsletter.

Congratulations to Professor Matthew Schwartz for his promotion to the rank of Full Professor.