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] 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.[6][7] 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.[7]
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.[6]
Dresselhaus attended Hunter College in New York. Traditionally a women's college, during Dresselhaus's time as a student there, Hunter College's Bronx campus opened itself to a flood of male G.I. Bill beneficiaries.[8] Dresselhaus later explained:
The boys in the science classes were toward the bottom of the class... They always used to come to me for help.... That might be somewhat significant in my story, because I never got the idea in college that science was a man's profession.[9]
While attending Hunter, one of her professors, and future Nobel-Prize-winner Rosalyn Yalow took interest in Dresselhaus and encouraged her to apply for graduate fellowships and pursue a career in physics. Dresselhaus graduated with her undergraduate degree in liberal arts in 1951.[2][6]
Dresselhaus had a 57-year career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[11] 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. In 1994, Dresselhaus was one of 16 women faculty in the School of Science at MIT who drafted and co-signed a letter to the then-Dean of Science (now Chancellor of Berkeley) Robert Birgeneau, which started a campaign to highlight and challenge gender discrimination at MIT.[12][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.[6]
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.
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 Saito-Fujita-Dresselhaus 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 APS created the Millie Dresselhaus Fund to support 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]
Oral history interview with Mildred Dresselhaus on the occasion of her winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the U.S. government, in 2014
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 remarried in 1958 to Gene Dresselhaus who became a well known theoretician and discoverer of the Dresselhaus effect.[33] They had four children – Marianne, Carl, Paul, and Eliot – and five grandchildren.[11]
di Vittorio, S.L.; Dresselhaus, M.S.; Endo, M.; Issi, J-P.; Piraux, L. (July 1, 1990). The transport properties of activated carbon fibers (Report). Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI). doi:10.2172/6882792.
J. Heremans & M. S. Dresselhaus (2005). "Low Dimensional Thermoelectricity"(PDF). CRC Handbook - Molecular and Nano-electronics: Concepts, Challenges, and Designs. Archived from the original(PDF) on January 9, 2007.
S. G. Chou; F. Plentz-Filho; J. Jiang; R. Saito; D. Nezich; H. B. Ribeiro; A. Jorio; M. A. Pimenta; G. Samsonidze; A. P. Santos; M. Zheng; G. B. Onoa; E. D. Semke; G. Dresselhaus; M. S. Dresselhaus (2005). "Photo-excited Electron Relaxation Process Observed in Photoluminescence Spectroscopy of DNA-wrapped Carbon Nanotube". Physical Review Letters. 94 (12): 127402. Bibcode:2005PhRvL..94l7402C. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.127402. PMID15903960.
^M. S. Dresselhaus, interview with S. Sherkow, 7 and 15 June, 11 and 19 August, 13, 20, 22, 24, and 30 September, and 15 October 1976. MIT Archives and Special Collections, Cambridge, MA, USA 18.
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