Matthew Walker

Matthew Walker calls himself the “Sleep Diplomat.” He has built a career on studying the science of sleep and its impacts.

Walker was born in the United Kingdom. He studied neuroscience at the University of Nottingham and got his Ph.D. in neurophysiology from Newcastle University.

While working as a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Walker studied the effects of sleep on performance. He then moved to a role at the University of California, Berkeley. There, he created the Center for Human Sleep Science to further research sleep.

Walker has also worked with technology companies. With the life sciences division of Google, he helped to develop a sleep diary. Walker also worked with Hello on a sleep tracking device until the company ceased operations in 2017.

Why We Sleep is Walker’s first book.