Tau Decay Determination of the Strange Quark Mass

The recent ALEPH measurements of the inclusive Cabibbo--suppressed decay width of the $\tau$ and several moments of its invariant mass distribution are used to determine the value of the strange quark mass. We obtain, in the $\bar{\rm MS}$ scheme, $m_s(M_\tau^2) = (119\pm 24)$ MeV, which corresponds to $m_s(1 {\rm GeV}^2) = (164 \pm 33) {\rm MeV}, m_s(4 {\rm GeV}^2) = (114\pm 23) {\rm MeV}$.