Mildred Dresselhaus

Mildred Dresselhaus
Mildred Dresselhaus at the White House in 2012
Born	(1930-11-11) November 11, 1930 Brooklyn, New York
Residence	United States
Citizenship	U.S.A.
Nationality	American
Fields	Applied physics
Institutions	Cornell MIT
Alma mater	Hunter College Cambridge University Harvard University University of Chicago
Doctoral students	Greg Timp
Known for	Carbon nanotubes
Notable awards	National Medal of Science (1990) IEEE Founders Medal (2004) Harold Pender Award (2006) Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (2008) Oersted Medal (2008) Vannevar Bush Award (2009) Enrico Fermi Award (2012) Kavli Prize in Nanoscience (2012) Presidential Medal of Freedom (2014)

Mildred Dresselhaus (born Mildred Spiewak on November 11, 1930 in Brooklyn, New York), known as the "queen of carbon science", is an institute professor and professor of physics and electrical engineering (emerita) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Biography

She was born Mildred Spiewak on November 11, 1930 in Brooklyn.

Dresselhaus received her high school degree at Hunter College High School, undergraduate degree at Hunter College in New York, and carried out postgraduate study at the University of Cambridge on a Fulbright Fellowship and Harvard University. She received a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1958. She then spent two years at Cornell University as a postdoc before moving to Lincoln Lab as a staff member. She became a 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 promoted to institute professor – the first female institute professor at MIT.

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. and in 2005 she was awarded the 11th Annual Heinz Award in the category of Technology, the Economy and Employment. In 2008 she was awarded the Oersted Medal. IEEE Medal of Honor - 2015

In 2000–2001, she was the director of the Office of Science at the U.S. Department of Energy. From 2003-2008, 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, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and treasurer of the National Academy of Sciences. Dresselhaus has devoted a great deal of time to supporting efforts to promote increased participation of women in physics.

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

In a United States Department of Energy article of January 11, 2012, President Barack Obama announced that Mildred Dresselhaus is co-recipient of the Enrico Fermi Award, along with Burton Richter. On May 31, 2012, Dresselhaus was awarded the Kavli Prize "for her pioneering contributions to the study of phonons, electron-phonon interactions, and thermal transport in nanostructures."

In 2010, Dresselhaus won the ACS Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in the Chemical Sciences.

In 2014, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Dresselhaus is particularly noted for her work on graphite, graphite intercalation compounds, fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and low-dimensional thermoelectrics. Her group has made frequent use of electronic band structure, Raman scattering and the photophysics of carbon nanostructures. Dresselhaus' former students include such notable materials scientists as Deborah Chung and notable physicists as Nai-Chang Yeh, Greg Timp, Mansour Shayegan, James S. Speck, Lourdes Salamanca Riba, and Ahmet Erbil.

There are several physical theories named after Dresselhaus. The Hicks-Dresselhaus Model (L. D. Hicks and Dresselhaus) is the first basic model for low-dimensional thermoelectrics, which initiated the whole brand field. The SFDD model (Riichiro Saito, Mitsutaka Fujita, Gene Dresselhaus, and Mildred Dresselhaus) first predicted the band structures of carbon nanotubes. The Tang-Dresselhaus Theory (Shuang Tang and Dresselhaus) has developed a methodology for studying narrow-band low dimensional materials systems, and is also the first theory on how to construct various Dirac-cone materials, including single-Dirac-cone materials, bi-Dirac-cone materials, tri-Dirac-cone materials, quasi-Dirac-cone materials, semi-Dirac-cone materials and exact-Dirac-cone materials. The Rashba-Dresselhaus Effect refers to the spin-orbital interaction effect modeled by Gene Dresselhaus, Mildred Dresselhaus's husband.

She is married to Gene Dresselhaus, a well-known theorist, and has four children and several grandchildren.

Honors and awards

• Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science from the ETH Zurich, 2015
• IEEE Medal of Honor, 2015 (first female recipient)
• Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2014.
• Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, 2013
• Arthur R. von Hippel Award, Materials Research Society, 2013
• Kavli Prize in Nanoscience, 2012
• Enrico Fermi Award, 2012
• Vannevar Bush Award, 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
• Weizmann Institute's Millennial Lifetime Achievement Award, June 2000
• SGL Carbon Award, American Carbon Society, 1997
• National Medal of Science, 1990

Selected publications

• Dresselhaus, M. S.; et.al. "Analysis of Picosecond Pulsed Laser Melted Graphite", Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, United States Department of Energy, (December 1986).
• Dresselhaus, M. S.; et.al. "The Transport Properties of Activated Carbon Fibers", Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, United States Department of Energy, (July 1990).
• Dresselhaus, M. S.; et.al. "Photoconductivity of Activated Carbon Fibers", Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, United States Department of Energy, (August 1990).
• Dresselhaus, M. S.; et.al. "Synthesis and Evaluation of Single Layer, Bilayer, and Multilayer Thermoelectric Thin Films", Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, United States Department of Energy, (January 20, 1995).
• Dresselhaus, M. S.; et.al. "Iron-Doped Carbon Aerogels: Novel Porous Substrates for Direct Growth of Carbon Nanotubes", Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, United States Department of Energy, (February 20, 2007).

External links

• Freeview video interview with Millie Dresslhaus by the Vega Science Trust
• Homepage
• Dresselhaus's MIT page
• Biography of Dresselhaus from IEEE
• Photograph, Biography and Bibliographic Resources, from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, United States Department of Energy