This is Sabrina Pasterski, a girl who knew how to build an airplane engine when she was just 14 years old. At 16, she became the youngest person ever to fly in a plane she built herself. Now, she has a Ph.D. in physics and is doing amazing work studying black holes.
Sabrina got her doctorate from Harvard and works on some of the toughest topics in physics: black holes, gravity, and space-time. The way she tackles these subjects has led some to call her a “new Einstein.”
Sabrina was born in Chicago to an American father and a Cuban mother. She went to a school for highly gifted kids. In 2013, she became the first woman in 20 years to graduate from MIT with a physics degree at the top of her class.
Stephen Hawking mentioned her work several times in a paper he published in 2016. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, wore a T-shirt with her image on it and invited her to work for his space company, “Blue Origin.” He told her she could work wherever she wanted, saying it was important for her to have that freedom. NASA also made her a similar offer.
But Sabrina turned down both offers, choosing to focus on her scientific research for now, without the pressure of working for a company.