Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski is a distinguished theoretical physicist renowned for her groundbreaking contributions to high energy physics and gravitational theory. She earned her bachelor's degree with a perfect 5.00 GPA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was recognized as the first woman in 20 years to graduate at the top of the MIT Physics undergraduate program. She subsequently completed her doctoral studies at Harvard University under the supervision of Professor Andrew Strominger, earning her PhD in 2019 with a dissertation that focused on celestial amplitudes. Now a faculty member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, she joined the faculty in 2021, when she was either 27 or 28 years old, depending on the exact date; Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski was born on June 3, 1993, indicating she was 27 until June 2, 2021, and 28 thereafter. Multiple sources state her age at appointment as 27, but based on dates, her exact age depends on the timing of her appointment announcement and official start, becoming one of the youngest and one of at least six women among the institute's faculty as of 2025, including Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski.
Dr. Pasterski's seminal contribution to physics came in 2014 when she and her colleagues discovered the spin memory effect, a phenomenon that may enable the detection and verification of gravitational wave effects beyond what current instruments like LIGO can measure. She further advanced this work by publishing the Pasterski-Strominger-Zhiboedov Triangle in Electromagnetic Memory as a solo author in 2015, research that was subsequently cited by the late Stephen Hawking in 2016. Her dissertation on Implications of Superrotations established her as a leading expert in celestial holography, an innovative approach to understanding quantum gravity through holographic principles. Currently, she serves as the founder and principal investigator of the Celestial Holography Initiative at age 27, leading a team working to encode the universe into a hologram to better understand the connection between spacetime and quantum theory.
As a committed advocate for science education, Dr. Pasterski has been actively involved with the Let Girls Learn initiative, earning recognition from the White House and international organizations for her work promoting STEM education for girls. She holds leadership positions including serving as the first woman to chair the flagship annual conference for the extended string theory community known as Strings. Her work has attracted significant attention, with China planning to launch three satellites to test her 2014 gravitational wave detection concept from space. Honored with multiple prestigious awards including the Forbes 30 Under 30 designation and the IMSA Distinguished Leader Award from the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in 2019, she continues to shape the future of theoretical physics through her research on black holes and spacetime symmetries.
