Do You Know About Mildred Dresselhaus?
Dear friends of women in science,
Not long ago, Sonia Pressman Fuentes sent me a link to an article about Mildred Spiewak Dresselhaus, the "Queen of Carbon." My lame excuse for being ignorant about her achievements is that I'm a biologist, but I think really everyone should know about her. An article about her appeared in The New York Times on July 3, 2012.
She is a professor of physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, already a rara avis of sorts. But then, it's what her work is about. She works on carbon fibers. Do you know how much of today's world depends on carbon fibers? A lot of the marvelous ways we use them today depend on her basic research. Dresselhaus was among the first to find ways to study single layers of carbon atoms. She learned how to capture the heat energy of vibration of particles at boundaries and to use that heat to generate electric current. Some of the fibers she and her group produced are stronger than steele but weigh only a tiny fraction of the weight of steel. Nanotechnology, the darling of today's industrial innovation, depends heavily on insights from her group.
In 2012, she was recognized with the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience, a $1 million dollar award. She has also received the National Medal of Science, the Enrico Fermi Award, and many other awards. She was in the Department of Energy under President Bill Clinton.
Mildred Dresselhaus has worked to improve the lot of women in science too. When she grew up in a poor family in the Bronx, being a woman wasn't the only reason people looked askance at her interest in physics. But she persisted, even though in the late 1950s, there was anything but a warm welcome for women in any science, particularly physics. But she was inspired by Nobel laureate, Rosalyn Yalow, whom she met before she had received the Nobel Prize. And, very pleasing to me with my interest in women not giving up the goal of family-science balance, she married a fellow physicist and had four children. She says she chose a less competitive area to study (then, superconductors were the hot topic) so that it wouldn't be so bad if she had to stay home sometimes with a sick child. And she says having a good husband has been vital to her success. One of her grandchildren is a woman who will start at MIT this fall and plans to study nanotechnology.
When she came to MIT, she and her husband both received offers back in 1960, a time when anti-nepotism rules were begining to break down nationally. That helped women in science, whose spouses are often also in science and academia. At that time, only 4% of the students were women, but now it's up to about 40%.
Millie Dresselhaus is a wonderful woman and a great scientist! She's such an inspiration.
Dear Laura,
I don't agree with Caridsa about awards for women. As long as it is so hard for women to win the open awards, as shown by the AWIS data you showed us recently Laura, I think the awards for women can be encouraging to women. Yes, they should have won the open awards. But we must be realistic: they still don't have a fair shot at them, Ceci and Williams to the contrary notwithstanding.
ERN
Hi Laura,
I think Carole D is right, she should have won the Nobel. But at least this was a huge open prize and not just a prize for women. I would hate to win a prize for women, it seems like such a consolation prize. Our science is (and should be) just as good, so we shouldn't have to have such a category of prizes in science.
Caridsa
Dear Laura,
She should have won the Nobel prize when those men won for nanotechnology (Bucky balls and nanotubes, I believe, but without Mildred they would never have made any discoveries).
I'm glad she received such a nice big award, although it'll never be the same as the fame from winning the Nobel.
CND
