Genevieve Klien

During her adolescence, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski constructed a functioning aircraft from an assembly kit and piloted the vehicle independently by the age of sixteen. Today, the prominent theoretical physicist, frequently compared to Albert Einstein by academic peers, conducts research aimed at uncovering the fundamental mathematical structure governing the cosmos. She currently serves as a faculty member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada, where she manages the Celestial Holography Initiative. Her primary research focuses on quantum gravity, a profound challenge in modern physics centered on reconciling Albert Einstein's general relativity, which explains macro-scale gravity, space, and time, with quantum mechanics, which dictates the behavior of subatomic particles. Within this domain, she has formulated a novel structural framework designed to describe the essential physics of our universe. This model, known as celestial holography, maps bulk gravitational interactions onto a lower-dimensional boundary. The paradigm conceptualizes the universe similarly to a standard hologram, suggesting that four-dimensional spacetime phenomena can be mathematically encoded on a vast, distant spherical boundary encompassing the cosmos, mirroring the way a flat surface stores a three-dimensional visual image. Pasterski notes that the highly specialized nature of this advanced framework limits meaningful discussion of her research to a few thousand experts globally. Her path to high-energy physics deviated significantly from traditional academic trajectories. After completing her experimental aircraft construction as a teenager, she attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in 2013 with the highest achievable grade point average in the physics department. She subsequently pursued graduate studies at Harvard University, earning a doctorate in 2019. During her doctoral work, she co-discovered a novel manifestation of infrared physics known as the spin memory effect. This phenomenon represents a permanent, physical distortion or angular momentum imprint left behind in the fabric of spacetime after the passage of gravitational waves. While these concepts currently remain entirely theoretical, they establish a foundational roadmap for ongoing investigations into quantum gravity. References: Pasterski, S., Pate, M., & Raclariu, A. M. (2021). Celestial Holography. Snowmass 2022 White Paper, arXiv:2111.11392. DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2111.11392 Pasterski, S. (2024). A Chapter on Celestial Holography. In Handbook of Quantum Gravity, Springer, arXiv:2310.04932. DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2310.04932 Pasterski, S., Strominger, A., & Zhiboedov, A. (2016). New Gravitational Memories. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2016(12), 053. DOI: 10.1007/JHEP12(2016)053