Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski

By: Holly Machado ‘25

The title of “The Next Albert Einstein” belongs to a firstgeneration, Cuban-American, native-Chicagoan scientist: Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski

Born June 3rd, 1993 to an encouraging engineering family, she built and flew her own single-engined airplane at just fourteen years old, thus founding Sabrina Aircraft Manufacturing (1) Years later, she became the first woman to graduate top of her class from the Massachusetts Insitute of Technology with a Bachelor’s in Physics. She went on to become a Harvard Physics Ph.D. candidate at 21 (2).

In 2014, Pasterski and her fellow Harvard colleagues discovered the Spin Memory Effect This theory may assist in detecting, verifying, or identifying the effect of gravitational waves, both astrophysically and theoretically, on the past and future (3) This discovery revolutionized the way physicians and mathematicians alike viewed other gravitational and mechanical theories, as well as later discoveries The discovery of this theory granted her complete academic freedom and allowed her to individually publish her findings in 2015. This publication would ultimately be cited by Stephen Hawking a year later. Additionally, she became the second-ever Ph.D. Harvard candidate to have her dissertation published in Physics Report, a well-renowned scholarly journal. In 2019, she earned her Ph.D. and completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Princeton Centre for Theoretical Science after her graduation.

After graduating from both Harvard in 2019 and Princeton in 2021, she turned down a $11 million offer from Brown University to become an assistant professor in 2021, furthering her research as a High-Energy Theorist with the Perimeter Institute of Physics. Her research follows the complications of black holes and spacetime, as well as the explanations of gravity in quantum mechanics (5) And because she could not possibly be tackling enough in the field of science, she is both a spokesperson for Women in STEM since 2020 and a Deputy Director of the Simons Collaboration on Celestial Holography. This concept presents that the universe can be understood in a variation of ways, specifically as a “projection of the night sky” (4). It involves collaborating with various other research fields such as quantum gravity and mathematical physics Her most recent publication, cowritten with Yangrui Hu, The Director Operators for Celestial Symmetries, is published in the High Energy Physics journal (5). On top of it all, she continues to post videos to her YouTube channel, PhysicsGirl, to help further her reach to anyone interested in both her work, and the works of others.

It is a powerful notion to be rewarded for one’s research by those well-adjusted in their positions, but it is much more striking to move young women to pursue a career they once had no place in. Pasterski is one of many young women who have staked their claim in the field of science, and she is certainly not the last

Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski has been playing such a transformative role in the world of physics She pioneered an entirely new realm of uncharted territory surrounding astrophysics, quantum physics, and mechanics. Her story of success starting from such a young age, as both a well-educated woman and a first-generation CubanAmerican, speaks volumes to other young girls who aspire to follow in her footsteps

3 The Celestial Hologram: From Stargazing to Quantum Gravity and Back Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory wwwppplgov/events/2024/celestialhologram-stargazing-quantum-gravity-andback#:~:text=Celestial%20Holography%20proposes%20that%20our,mathematical% 20physics%20and%20quantum%20gravity

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4 Hu, Yangrui, and Sabrina Pasterski “Detector operators for celestial symmetries” Journal of High Energy Physics, vol 2023, no 12, 2023, https://doiorg/101007/jhep12(2023)035