22-year-old genius Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski has earned a distinct reputation for being the next Einstein. She was only 13 years old when she built a single-engine aircraft to surprise her father. Nine years later, she’s an MIT graduate and a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard, where she’s studying Physics. She’s frequently appeared on the list of Forbes’ ’30 under 30.’ And she’s not done yet.
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Picture: Michael Noble |
Some of the physics world’s most desirable jobs are already knocking at Pasterski’s door. Jeff Bezos of Amazon has an open invitation for her—and NASA has already expressed their interest as well. At the moment, however, she’s focusing in on her studies of black holes, space-time, and gravity—the same fields that fascinated Einstein and Hawking.
“Years of pushing the bounds of what I could achieve led me to physics,” Pasterski said in an interview, noting that “spotting elegance within the chaos” is what captures her attention most.
Surprisingly, the young genius shies away from attention and social media. Perhaps that is because she is remarkably hard on herself. She’s determined to live up to her reputation.
“I definitely feel like I have way more to do. It’s great to get recognition now, but hopefully, it builds up to something,” Pasterski commented. “I’ll hopefully be right about having some kind of gut feeling that [will becomes] rather big at some point. Fingers crossed.”
But for every doubt Pasterski has, she has a fierce advocate pushing her forward.
Professor Allen Haggert, Senior Engineering Lecturer at MIT, notes that “Her potential is off the charts.” Pasterski graduated from MIT with the highest possible grade average—a 5.00.
What do you think? Is Pasterski destined to do great things?
