Mildred Dresselhaus

Born on 11 November 1930 in Brooklyn, New York, condensed-matter physicist Mildred S. Dresselhaus performed groundbreaking studies of nanostructured carbon and other materials. She studied at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in England on a Fulbright fellowship. She attained a PhD in physics from the University of Chicago at a time when about 2% of those earning physics PhDs were women. In 1960 Dresselhaus was hired at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory to do magneto-optics research. Rather than studying semiconductors, which many other researchers were doing, she worked with graphite. She studied the electronic band structure of graphite and other carbon structures, which led her to predict that certain forms of carbon would exhibit exotic properties. Those predictions were validated with the discovery of fullerenes (including buckyballs), carbon nanotubes, and graphene. She also pioneered experimental techniques to study the electronic and thermal properties of thin materials. In 1968 Dresselhaus became the first tenured woman in MIT’s School of Engineering. She served as president of both the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2012 she was awarded the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience, followed two years later by the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Dresselhaus died at age 86 in February 2017, shortly after she was featured in a popular General Electric commercial. She had such a profound influence that dozens of her friends and colleagues offered to reflect on her life for Physics Today. Along with the obituary that ran in the magazine, you can read remembrances from 17 contributors. (Photo credit: Michael D. Duncan, courtesy Emilio Segrè Visual Archives)

Date in History: 11 November 1930