Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski (born June 3, 1993) is an American theoretical physicist from Chicago who studies high energy physics.[2][3] She describes herself as "a proud first-generation Cuban-American and Chicago Public Schools alumna".[4] Her first few months at Harvard's Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature (2014) resulted in discovery of the spin memory effect which predates LIGO's reported discoveries and may be proven as an inexpensive way to detect as well as verify gravitational waves and their net effects during a very rare celestial gravitational lensing event the first week of May 2028 if not sooner via Advanced LIGO [5][6][7][8] Since leaving Harvard, Pasterski has pioneered Celestial Holography. [9][10][11] She completed her undergraduate studies in three years while still a teenager at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), earned her PhD from Harvard University and was a PCTS Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University[12] before joining the faculty of the Perimeter Institute at age 27.[13] According to Google Trends, Pasterski was the #3 Trending Scientist for all of 2017.[14] In 2015, she was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 Science list, named a Forbes 30 under 30 All Star in 2017, and returned as a judge in 2018 as part of Forbes' first ever all-female Science category judging panel.[15]
Pasterski earned her PhD in physics from Harvard University in May 2019. At age 27, she founded the Celestial Holography Initiative and within six months had hired four post-docs.[13] Pasterski invited Andrew Strominger to join Perimeter's Simons Foundation LOI requesting $8,000,000.00 for Celestial Holography.[27] That collaboration is now underway as the Simons Collaboration on Celestial Holography.[28]
WIRED's “A New Way to Understand the Universe” and the live broadcast of “What if the Universe is a Hologram?” from CBC's The Current featured the first decade of Pasterski's pioneering work in physics from 2014 thru 2023.[29][30]
Hawking's citation of Pasterski's solo work on the PSZ Triangle was publicized by actor George Takei when he quoted her on his Twitter account: "Hopefully I'm known for what I do and not what I don't do."[31] The Steven P. Jobs Trust article included in the tweet has been shared 1,200,000 times.[32]
Pasterski's 2016 work in promoting the Let Girls Learn initiative was recognized by an invitation to the White House,[33] a congratulatory message from the White House played on network television,[34] and a two-page spread in Marie Claire's January 2017 issue with former First Lady Michelle Obama.[35]
Pasterski's 2017 work in promoting STEM education for girls in Russia has been recognized by the U.S Embassy in Moscow[38] and by the Moscow Polytech.[39]
International print and television coverage of Pasterski's work has appeared in Russian, Polish, Czech,[40] Spanish, German, Hindi and French: Russia Today, Poland's Angora magazine, DNES magazine in the Czech Republic, People en Español, Jolie in Germany, Vanitha TV in India, Madame magazine in France, le Figaro magazine Paris, Femina magazine in Switzerland, and Marie Claire España.[41][42][43] In 2016, R&B singer Chris Brown posted a page with a video promoting her.[44] Forbes and The History Channel ran stories about Gonzalez Pasterski for their audiences in Mexico and Latin America, respectively.[45][46]
Checking the accuracy of media portrayals, Snopes found that the "viral meme about [the] Harvard University graduate student gets most (but not all) of the facts right." Pasterski and Hawking do not follow each other on Twitter, since neither Hawking nor Pasterski had a Twitter account, Snopes stated instead that "the truth is actually much more interesting" pointing out that two scientific papers published in 2016 and co-authored by Hawking cited two pieces of research co-authored by Pasterski and one written solely by her. Pasterski keeps a list of personal responses to media portrayals on her website.[47]
2018, Albert Einstein Foundation Genius 100 Visions Project – "One of the 100 greatest innovators, artists, scientists and visionaries of our time."[57]
^Pasterski, Sabrina; Strominger, Andrew; Zhiboedov, Alexander (2015). "Asymptotic Symmetries and Electromagnetic Memory". Journal of High Energy Physics. 2017 (9). arXiv:1505.00716. doi:10.1007/JHEP09(2017)154. S2CID59500056.
