She is called the new Einstein of the 21st century: who is Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski

Who is Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski?

Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski was born on June 3, 1993, in Chicago, USA, to a family of Cuban immigrants. From an early age, she demonstrated a deep interest in science and technology, which shaped her future path.

At the age of 14, Sabrina built a single-engine aircraft of the same name and even made her first flight in it, recording the process and sharing it with the world. This event attracted media attention and showed that she was not an ordinary teenager—she already possessed remarkable engineering skills at that time. 

Education and Career in Science

Pasterski graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in just three years with a maximum GPA. During her studies, she received a prestigious internship at NASA and participated in experiments with the Compact Muon Solenoid at CERN. 

After earning her bachelor's degree, Sabrina entered the graduate program at Harvard University, where she had the freedom to choose her own research directions and conduct research in theoretical physics. Among her works are studies on the spin memory effect and other fundamental questions related to quantum gravity, symmetries, and holography. 

Sabrina is often called the "new Einstein"—a relatively young scientist with the potential to make major discoveries. This label frequently appears in the media when discussing her early achievements and the Celestial Holography Initiative, which aims to unify concepts of quantum mechanics and the structure of space-time. 

Additionally, her name appeared in the Forbes 30 Under 30 rankings in the "Science" category in 2015, as well as in lists of influential young physics researchers, reinforcing her status as a global young leader in science and technology. 

Impact on Science and Society

Beyond her scientific achievements, Sabrina actively advocates for increasing the participation of women and girls in STEM fields. She collaborated with the Let Girls Learn initiative, was invited to events in Washington, and discussed the importance of equal access to education on the international stage. 

Sabrina Pasterski became known not only as a talented scientist but also as one of the leading researchers in the field of celestial holography—an approach that attempts to describe a four-dimensional universe through a two-dimensional "hologram" on the celestial sphere. This direction is connected to fundamental research on the interplay between symmetries, particle scattering, and the structure of space-time. 

Celestial holography is the idea that interactions of particles in our universe can be described as a two-dimensional conformal field theory on the so-called celestial sphere—a concept analogous to the holographic projection principle in other quantum gravity theories. Pasterski leads the Celestial Holography Initiative at the Perimeter Institute, bringing together different approaches in field theory and quantum gravity. 

Her work also includes the study of "memory effects"—predicted changes that occur in space-time after the passage of gravitational waves. One such result is the spin memory effect—a predicted property according to which gravitational waves leave an "imprint" not only on the trajectories of objects but also on the rotational component of space-time dimensions. This work, conducted jointly with Andrew Strominger and Alexander Zhiboedov, became one of the most cited and discussed in her scientific career. 

In more technical publications, she studied the influence of so-called BMS symmetries and loop corrections on the structure of Celestial CFT, which is important for understanding how large space-time symmetries manifest in quantum theories and whether these effects can be observed through correlations on the "celestial sphere."