Here is an accolade to Mildred Dresselhaus, a woman who began studying carbon allotropes on a nanoscale level and prompted other female physicists to follow her steps in STEM.
Mildred (“Millie”) Dresselhaus has been known by many titles: materials scientist, electrical engineer, nanophysicist, solid-state physicist—and notably, as Institute Professor Emerita of Physics and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, where she finished her career with more than 1,700 research papers behind her name. A prolific researcher and author, she co-authored eight books in her lifetime.
Dresselhaus’ Early Life
Born to Polish Jewish immigrants in 1930, Dresselhaus was raised in New York City where her interest in science was kindled by local museums like the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As an adult, she attended Hunter College in New York, where she excelled in science classes and tutored other students. Dresselhaus was encouraged by one of her teachers—the medicinal physicist and Nobel Laureate Rosalyn Yalow—to pursue a career in physics.
After graduating from Hunter College, Dresselhaus pursued her postgraduate education at the University of Cambridge on a Fulbright Fellowship. She then went on to earn her MA from Radcliffe College. In 1958, she graduated with her PhD from the University of Chicago, where she worked alongside Enrico Fermi, a Nobel laureate and creator of the world’s first nuclear reactor. Her next educational transition brought her to Cornell University for her postdoc before she landed at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory as a staff member.