He was born in Rojas, Buenos Aires Province on 24 June 1911. He was the tenth of eleven sons from an average family. His parents were Francesco Sabato and Giovanna Maria Ferrari, a pair of Italian inmigrants from Calabria. He began to study at the National University of La Plata in 1929, where he studied physics and mathematics. He became a member of a communist youth group and went to the International Lenin School in Moscow to study for two years. He was very concerned about the rise of Stalinism, and went back to Argentina as soon as he could. He went back to the university and completed his PhD in physics. In 1939 he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but after going back to Argentina in 1940, he decided that he wanted to be a writer.