Strang was born in
Chicago in 1934. His parents William and Mary Catherine Strang migrated to the USA from Scotland. He and his sister Vivian grew up in Washington DC and Cincinnati, and went to high school at Principia in
St. Louis. Strang graduated from MIT in 1955 with a
Bachelor of Science in mathematics. He then received a
Rhodes Scholarship to the
University of Oxford, where he received his
B.A. and
M.A. from
Balliol College in 1957. Strang earned his
Ph.D. from
UCLA in 1959 as a
National Science Foundation Fellow, under the supervision of
Peter K. Henrici. His dissertation was titled "Difference Methods for
Mixed Boundary Value Problems". While at Oxford, Strang met his future wife Jillian Shannon, and they married in 1958. Following his Ph.D. at UCLA, they have lived in Wellesley, Massachusetts for almost all of his 62 years on the
MIT faculty. The Strangs have three sons David, John, and Robert. They describe themselves as a very close-knit family. He retired on May 15, 2023 after giving his final "Linear Algebra and Learning from Data"
lecture at
MIT. Strang's teaching has focused on linear algebra which has helped the subject become essential for students of many majors. His linear algebra video lectures are popular on YouTube and MIT OpenCourseware. Strang founded Wellesley-Cambridge Press to publish
Introduction to Linear Algebra (now in 6th edition) and ten other books. ==University Positions ==