Jonathan Bagger is an American theoretical physicist specializing in high-energy particle physics, supersymmetry, and supergravity. He earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1983, under the supervision of Steven Weinberg. Following postdoctoral positions at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Institute for Advanced Study, Bagger joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he serves as a professor in the Department of Physics.
Bagger is widely recognized for his contributions to the development of supersymmetric field theories and for coauthoring the graduate‑level textbook Supersymmetry and Supergravity (first published in 1992) with Howard Goldstein. The book is a standard reference in the field and has been cited extensively in the scholarly literature.
His research has focused on:
- Formulating and analyzing models of supersymmetry breaking.
- Constructing supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics.
- Investigating the phenomenological implications of supergravity theories.
- Contributing to the development of effective field theory techniques applied to supersymmetric models.
Bagger has received several honors for his work, including a Sloan Research Fellowship (1989) and election as a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) for “pioneering contributions to the theory of supersymmetry and supergravity.” He has also served on advisory panels for the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, reviewing and guiding research programs in high-energy physics.
In addition to his research and teaching duties, Bagger is active in outreach and mentorship, supervising graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in theoretical physics. His publications appear in peer‑reviewed journals such as Physical Review D, Nuclear Physics B, and Journal of High Energy Physics.
Overall, Jonathan Bagger is a prominent figure in theoretical particle physics, known for his scholarly contributions to supersymmetry and supergravity and for his influential textbook that continues to educate new generations of physicists.
