Sara Seager

Seager was born on July 21, 1971; she is a Canadian citizen and became a US citizen on July 20, 2010.⁠[1]

She grew up in Toronto; her parents split up when she was very young, and she and her brother and sister often explored the city on their own. Her father, David Seager, was British. She recalls first really seeing the stars at the age of ten on a family camping trip.⁠[2]

From 1990 to 1994 she studied mathematics and physics at the University of Toronto, earning a BSc.⁠[1]

In 1999 she received a PhD in astronomy from Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry. Early on she determined that an exoplanet’s atmosphere could be observed during transit, when its spectrum stands out against the host star, and built a framework for interpreting such observations; her predictions led to the first detection of an exoplanet atmosphere with the Hubble Space Telescope.⁠[3]

On December 13, 1999, while at the Institute for Advanced Study, she and Harvard’s D. D. Sasselov submitted “Theoretical Transmission Spectra During Extrasolar Giant Planet Transits” to arXiv; it was published in The Astrophysical Journal, volume 537.⁠[4]

After three years as a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study in PrincetonPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry, she was a senior research staff member at the Carnegie Institution from 2002 to 2006, one of the few institutions then investing in exoplanet research.⁠[5]

In January 2007 she joined MIT as associate professor of planetary science, becoming professor of planetary science and physics in July 2010, Class of 1941 Professor Chair in January 2012 and also professor of aeronautics and astronautics in 2017.⁠[1]

In 2010 she published the books Exoplanet Atmospheres and Exoplanets.⁠[6]

In 2012 she was named to Time’s “25 Most Influential in Space”; earlier she appeared on Nature’s 2011 “Top Ten” and Discover’s 2008 “Best 20 under 40.” Asteroid 9729 is named in her honor.⁠[7]

In 2013 she was one of 24 MacArthur Fellows nationwide. She said that, as a single widowed mother, she would use all of the grant money on the home front so that her mind could be free to think creatively and she could spend time with her children.⁠[6]

In 2015 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.⁠[7]

In April 2018 NASANASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the U.S. federal agency responsible for the civilian space program, aeronautics research and space science. Established by law in 1958 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has run programs including Mercury, the Apollo Moon landings, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station and Artemis.Open the full entry’s MIT-led Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), in which she held a leading role, was launched; she also helped lead the Starshade Rendezvous Mission concept for directly imaging Earth analogs.⁠[8]

On August 16, 2020, she appeared on episode 116 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, discussing life beyond Earth, the Seager equation, Earth-like exoplanets, interstellar travel, the starshade and her memoir.⁠[9]

In 2020 Crown published her memoir The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir, a 320-page account of continuing her search for exoplanets while coping with the loss of her husband.⁠[10]

The memoir recounts that shortly after her father died of cancer in Toronto, her husband was also diagnosed with cancer and died after several rounds of chemotherapy, leaving her at 40 to raise their children alone; a group of widows in her town offered practical and emotional support, and she later found new love.⁠[10]

In the book she also writes about life with her sons, Max and Alex.⁠[2]

Anthony Doerr reviewed the book in The New York Times.⁠[11]

On September 14, 2020, a team led by Jane Greaves and including Seager announced the detection of phosphine in Venus’s clouds in Nature Astronomy; the team said known non-biological processes could not readily explain the amount and that confirming life would need much more work.⁠[12]

In March 2021 Andrew Lincowski, Victoria Meadows and colleagues at the University of Washington published two papers challenging the result, concluding that the signal identified as phosphine was more likely sulfur dioxide.⁠[13]

On October 21, 2020, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada for transforming the study of extrasolar planets into a full-fledged planetary science; she was invested on February 22, 2024.⁠[14]

In 2023 she and colleagues published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing in lab experiments that nucleic acid bases are stable in concentrated sulfuric acid, suggesting that chemistry able to support life may exist in Venus’s cloud particles.⁠[15]

On June 12, 2024, she and Harvard’s David Charbonneau were announced as winners of the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, sharing US$1 million, for the discovery of exoplanets and the characterization of their atmospheres.⁠[16]

The prize committee says she pioneered the theoretical study of planetary atmospheres, predicted atomic and molecular species such as the alkali gases detectable by transit spectroscopy, and was among the first to recognize the importance of starshades for detecting the faint light of Earth-like planets.⁠[17]

As of September 2025 the Venus probe for which she is principal investigator had been delivered to Rocket Lab’s facilities in Long Beach, with launch planned for 2026.⁠[15]

On November 18, 2025, the University of Toronto announced that she would become a North Star Distinguished Professor from September 1, 2026, at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, with cross-appointments in physics, chemistry and astronomy and astrophysics. She said she was excited to return to the institution where her academic journey began.⁠[18]

She received the NOMIS Foundation’s 2025 NOMIS Award and leads its 2025–2030 project From Lab to Cosmos: Rethinking Habitability and the Search for Life Beyond Earth.⁠[19]

The first of the Morning Star missions to Venus that she leads, the Rocket Lab Mission, will deploy a small probe with an autofluorescence nephelometer to analyze Venusian cloud particles for signs of organic molecules. In September 2026 she said Rocket Lab had moved the mission to its Neutron rocket and the team was awaiting Neutron’s readiness; Neutron’s first launch had been pushed to 2027.⁠[20]

As of October 2026 she is North Star Distinguished Professor and Eddie Goldenberg Distinguished Research Chair in Planetary and Molecular Sensing Technologies at the University of Toronto, and MIT Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Science Emerita and Professor of Physics Emerita.⁠[19]

Personal website: Public link: https://www.saraseager.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[7]

X: Public account: https://x.com/profsaraseager (opens in a new window)⁠[9]

Institute for Advanced Study: Official website: https://www.ias.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[3]

Carnegie Science: Official website: https://carnegiescience.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[5]

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Official website: https://www.mit.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[8]

University of Toronto: Official website: https://www.utoronto.ca/ (opens in a new window)⁠[18]