One of the
things the brilliant minds at MIT do — besides ponder the nature of the
universe and build sci-fi gizmos, of course — is notarize aircraft
airworthiness for the federal government. So when Sabrina Pasterski walked into
the campus offices one cold January morning seeking the OK for a single-engine
plane she had built, it might have been business as usual.
Except that the shaggy-haired, wide-eyed plane
builder before them was just 14 and had already flown solo. “I couldn’t believe
it,” recalls Peggy Udden, an executive secretary at MIT, “not only because she
was so young, but a girl.”
OK, it’s
2016, and gifted females are not exactly rare at MIT; nearly half the
undergrads are women. But something about Pasterski led Udden not just to help
get her plane approved, but to get the attention of the university’s top
professors. Now, eight years later, the lanky, 22-year-old Pasterski is already
an MIT graduate and Harvard Ph.D. candidate who has the world of physics abuzz.
She’s exploring some of the most challenging and complex issues in physics,
much as Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein (whose theory of relativity just
turned 100 years old) did early in their careers.
Her research
delves into black holes, the nature of gravity and spacetime. A particular
focus is trying to better understand “quantum gravity,” which seeks to explain
the phenomenon of gravity within the context of quantum mechanics. Discoveries
in that area could dramatically change our understanding of the workings of the
universe.
She’s also
caught the attention of some of America’s brightest working at NASA. Also? Jeff
Bezos, founder of Amazon.com and aerospace developer and manufacturer Blue
Origin, who’s promised her a job whenever she’s ready. Asked by e-mail recently
whether his offer still stands, Bezos told OZY: “God, yes!”
But unless
you’re the kind of rabid physics fan who’s seen her papers on semiclassical
Virasoro symmetry of the quantum gravity S-matrix and Low’s subleading soft
theorem as a symmetry of QED (both on approaches to understanding the shape of
space and gravity and the first two papers she ever authored), you may not have
heard of Pasterski.
A
first-generation Cuban-American born and bred in the suburbs of Chicago, she’s
not on Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram and doesn’t own a smartphone. She does,
however, regularly update a no-frills website called PhysicsGirl, which
features a long catalog of achievements and proficiencies. Among them:
“spotting elegance within the chaos.”
Pasterski
stands out among a growing number of newly minted physics grads in the U.S.
There were 7,329 in 2013, double the four-decade low of 3,178 in 1999,
according to the American Institute of Physics. Nima Arkani-Hamed, a Princeton
professor and winner of the inaugural $3 million Fundamental Physics Prize,
told OZY he’s heard “terrific things” about Pasterski from her adviser, Harvard
professor Andrew Strominger, who is about to publish a paper with physics rock
star Hawking. She’s also received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants
from the Hertz Foundation, the Smith Foundation and the National Science
Foundation.
Pasterski, who
speaks in frenetic bursts, says she has always been drawn to challenging what’s
possible. “Years of pushing the bounds of what I could achieve led me to
physics,” she says from her dorm room at Harvard. Yet she doesn’t make it sound
like work at all: She calls physics “elegant” but also full of “utility.”
Despite her
impressive résumé, MIT wait-listed Pasterski when she first applied. Professors
Allen Haggerty and Earll Murman were aghast. Thanks to Udden, the pair had seen
a video of Pasterski building her airplane. “Our mouths were hanging open after
we looked at it,” Haggerty said. “Her potential is off the charts.” The two
went to bat for her, and she was ultimately accepted, later graduating with a
grade average of 5.00, the school’s highest score possible.
An only
child, Pasterski speaks with some awkwardness and punctuates her e-mails with
smiley faces and exclamation marks. She says she has a handful of close friends
but has never had a boyfriend, an alcoholic drink or a cigarette. Pasterski
says: “I’d rather stay alert, and hopefully I’m known for what I do and not
what I don’t do.”
While
mentors offer predictions of physics fame, Pasterski appears well grounded. “A
theorist saying he will figure out something in particular over a long time
frame almost guarantees that he will not do it,” she says. And Bezos’s pledge
notwithstanding, the big picture for science grads in the U.S. is challenging:
The U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent American Community Survey shows that only
about 26 percent of science grads in the U.S. had jobs in their chosen fields,
while nearly 30 percent of physics and chemistry post-docs are unemployed.
Pasterski
seems unperturbed. “Physics itself is exciting enough,” she says. ”It’s not
like a 9-to-5 thing. When you’re tired you sleep, and when you’re not, you do
physics.”
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