Click here
The Queen of carbon
Mildred Dresselhaus is physicist, born in the
United States at the beginning of the Great Depression in 1930. She died on February 20, 2017.
Daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants with very
few resources she was an excellent student and
she decided to devote herself to science following
the example of her physics professor, and future
Medicine Nobel laureate, Rosalyn Yalow. This
was the 40s, a time when virtually the only jobs
reserved for women were teacher, secretary or
nurse.
She graduated in science in 1951 with the highest
distinctions of her university. She did her PhD at
the University of Chicago, where she studied with
the Nobel prize winner Enrico Fermi.
She married in 1958 and had four children in a
short space of time. Her superiors, however, were
very unsympathetic with her situation and her
need to combine work and family. She developed
almost all her career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dresselhaus delved into a new field of study,
magneto-optics. Instead of following the majority
by studying semiconductors, she deliberately
chose to study a less competitive subject,
graphite. Her supervisors were quite skeptical
of this choice. In fact, her first experiments were quite disappointing because it was difficult
to obtain magneto-optical spectra. This situation completely reversed when she was able to
obtain samples of a new synthetic carbon
material called pyrolitic carbon.
Her research has helped to develop technology based on fine graphite, which has
made electronics ubiquitous, from clothing to
smartphones.
She has received several awards including the
National Medal of Science and the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, in recognition of her work
on the electronic properties of materials, as
well as by expanding the opportunities for
women in science and engineering, and more
particularly in physics.