Mildred Dresselhaus

Dresselhaus was born on November 11, 1930, in Brooklyn, New York City, the daughter of Ethel (Teichtheil) and Meyer Spiewak, who were Polish Jewish immigrants.[5][6] Her family was heavily affected by the Great Depression so from a young age Dresselhaus helped provide income for the family by doing piecework assembly tasks at home and by working in a zipper factory during the summer.[7][8] As a grade school student, Dresselhaus' first 'teaching job' was tutoring a special-needs student for fifty cents a week, and she learned how to be a good teacher.[8]

Dresselhaus credited New York's free museums, including the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with sparking her interest in science.[7] She and her brother, Irving Spiewak, were scholarship students at the Greenwich House Music School which introduced her to a different world of musical, artistic and intellectual leanings.[8]

Dresselhaus was raised and attended grade school in the Bronx. Her older brother informed her of the opportunity to apply to Hunter College High School, where she excelled and gained practice as a teacher by tutoring fellow students.[7]

Dresselhaus had a 57-year career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[12] She became the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Visiting Professor of electrical engineering at MIT in 1967, became a tenured faculty member in 1968, and became a professor of physics in 1983. In 1985, she was appointed the first female Institute Professor at MIT[13][14][15] As the exotic compounds she studied became increasingly relevant to modern science and engineering, she was uniquely positioned to become a world-leading expert and write one of the standard textbooks.[16] Her groundwork in the field led to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov isolating and characterizing graphene, for which they were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize.[7]

Dresselhaus was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1990 in recognition of her work on electronic properties of materials as well as expanding the opportunities of women in science and engineering.[17][18] In 2005 she was awarded the 11th Annual Heinz Award in the category of Technology, the Economy and Employment.[19] In 2008, she was awarded the Oersted Medal. In 2012, she was co-recipient of the Enrico Fermi Award, along with Burton Richter,[20] and was awarded the Kavli Prize[3] "for her pioneering contributions to the study of phonons, electron-phonon interactions, and thermal transport in nanostructures."[21] In 2014, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom[22] and was inducted into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.[23] In 2015, she received the IEEE Medal of Honor.

In 2000–2001, she was the director of the Office of Science at the U.S. Department of Energy. From 2003 to 2008, she was the chair of the governing board of the American Institute of Physics. She also has served as president of the American Physical Society, the first female president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and treasurer of the National Academy of Sciences.

Her former students include such notable materials scientists as Deborah Chung[24] and physicists as Nai-Chang Yeh and Greg Timp.

President Barack Obama greets Dr. Mildred Dresselhaus, third from right, and Dr. Burton Richter, right, May 7, 2012.

There are several physical theories named after Dresselhaus. The Hicks-Dresselhaus Model (L. D. Hicks and Dresselhaus)[25] is the first basic model for low-dimensional thermoelectrics, which initiated the whole band field. The SFDD model (Riichiro Saito, Mitsutaka Fujita, Gene Dresselhaus, and Mildred Dresselhaus)[26] first predicted the band structures of carbon nanotubes. The Dresselhaus effect refers, however, to the spin–orbit interaction effect modeled by Gene Dresselhaus, Mildred Dresselhaus's husband.

Dresselhaus devoted a great deal of time to supporting efforts to promote increased participation of women in physics. In 1971, Dresselhaus and a colleague organized the first Women's Forum at MIT as a seminar exploring the roles of women in science and engineering. In honor of her legacy, the American Physical Society (APS) created the Millie Dresselhaus Fund to support and empower women in physics.[27] Dresselhaus was the face of a 2017 General Electric television advertisement which asked the question "What if female scientists were celebrities?" aimed to increase the number of women in STEM roles in its ranks.[28]

In 2019, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Board of Directors created the IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal, awarded annually "for outstanding technical contributions in science and engineering, of great impact to IEEE fields of interest."[29]

Dresselhaus was particularly noted for her work on graphite, graphite intercalation compounds, fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and low-dimensional thermoelectrics. Her group made frequent use of electronic band structure, Raman scattering and the photophysics of carbon nanostructures.[12] Her research helped develop technology based on thin graphite which allow electronics to be "everywhere," including clothing and smartphones.[12]

With the appearance of lasers in the 1960s, Dresselhaus started to use lasers for magneto-optics experiments, which later led to the creation of a new model for the electronic structure of graphite.[30] A great part of her research dedicates to the study of 'buckyballs' and graphene focusing a great deal in the electrical properties of carbon nanotubes and enhancing thermoelectric properties of nanowires.[31]

Her first husband was physicist Frederick Reif.[32] She was then married to Gene Dresselhaus, a well known theoretician and discoverer of the Dresselhaus effect. They had four children - Marianne, Carl, Paul, and Eliot - and five grandchildren.[12]

• Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science from the ETH Zurich, 2015[33]
• IEEE Medal of Honor, 2015 (first female recipient)
• National Inventors Hall of Fame induction 2014[34]
• Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2014[35]
• Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, 2013[36]
• Von Hippel Award, Materials Research Society, 2013[37]
• Kavli Prize in Nanoscience, 2012
• Enrico Fermi Award (second female recipient), 2012
• Vannevar Bush Award (second female recipient), 2009
• ACS Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in the Chemical Sciences, 2009
• Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize, American Physical Society, 2008
• Oersted Medal, 2007
• L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science, 2007
• Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment, 2005
• IEEE Founders Medal Recipients, 2004
• Karl Taylor Compton Medal for Leadership in Physics, American Institute of Physics, 2001
• Medal of Achievement in Carbon Science and Technology, American Carbon Society, 2001
• Honorary Member of the Ioffe Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2000
• National Materials Advancement Award of the Federation of Materials Societies, 2000
• Honorary Doctorate from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, February 2000
• Nicholson Medal, American Physical Society, March 2000[38]
• Weizmann Institute's Millennial Lifetime Achievement Award, June 2000
• SGL Carbon Award, American Carbon Society, 1997
• Member of the American Philosophical Society, 1995[39]
• National Medal of Science, 1990
• Member of the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.), 1985[40]
• Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1974[41]
• Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award, 1977
• Fellow, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters[42]

• Freeview video interview with Mildred Dresslhaus by the Vega Science Trust
• Homepage
• "Mildred Dresselhaus: 1930-2017". American Physical Society. American Physical Society. Retrieved March 25, 2017.
• Dresselhaus's MIT page
• Biography of Dresselhaus from IEEE
• "What if female scientists were celebrities?", GE advertisement (2017)
• Schatz, George C.; Scholes, Greg D.; Stang, Peter J.; Burrows, Cindy J.; Winnick, Francoise M.; Alivisatos, A. Paul; Lieber, Charles M.; Weiss, Paul S.; Buriak, Jillian M. (June 27, 2017). "Virtual Issue Celebrating the Life and Career of Mildred Dresselhaus". Chemistry of Materials. 29 (12): 5017–5018. doi:10.1021/acs.chemmater.7b02398. ISSN 0897-4756.
• Mildred Dresselhaus Archived December 1, 2017, at the Wayback Machine Video produced by Makers: Women Who Make America