Physics prodigy Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski built her own
plane at 12, was rejected by MIT before persuading them to accept her, dubbed
'the next Einstein'
A woman who built her own aircraft at just 12 could dethrone
Albert Einstein as the greatest mind of all time — and she doesn't "want
to make billionaires richer."
32-year-old Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski built an aeroplane
when she was 12, was turned down by MIT, convinced them to accept her anyway,
graduated top of her class in physics, and went on to study at Harvard.
But she rejects the Einstein moniker. She said: "When
Harvard University called me 'the next Einstein', I expressed my rejection of
that title, stating, 'I am just a grad student. I have so much to learn. I do
not deserve the attention'".
Pasterski is tackling problems Einstein could not fully
explain — but she has always been ahead of the curve. As a child she built a
real aeroplane from scratch, mastering engineering, aerodynamics and physics.
At 16, she piloted the plane she built herself in Canada
with no instructor or safety net. She said: "Belief doesn't make planes
fly. Physics does", reports the Mirror US.
She applied to MIT and was turned down — so she sent MIT a
video of her flying the plane and they invited her to join the next semester.
Three years later she graduated from MIT with a perfect GPA.
Now she specialises in quantum gravity, black holes and the
structure of spacetime.
Stephen Hawking cited her work and Jeff Bezos invited her to
Blue Origin, his private space launch company.
She said no, saying: "I don't want to make billionaires
richer. I want to understand how the universe works."
While there, Pasterski and her colleagues uncovered a
phenomenon known as the 'spin memory effect', and upon publishing her findings,
she was cited by Professor Stephen Hawking.
According to SD2, Brown University put forward an offer of
$1.1 million for her to join their ranks, yet she declined in favour of The
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, where she is currently based.
Having joined in 2021, she now heads their Celestial
Holography Initiative, which involves encoding the universe as a hologram as
part of a project "uniting our understanding of spacetime with quantum
theory".
She explained: "Celestial holography consists of two
words: celestial and holography. Celestial literally means looking up at the
night sky to understand how to encode the physical universe as a
hologram".
Should that all seem a little too complex, there's no need
to worry — Pasterski also runs a YouTube channel, PhysicsGirl, where she breaks
down her research in an accessible manner.