{"id":35047,"date":"2017-02-27T08:37:52","date_gmt":"2017-02-27T14:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=35047"},"modified":"2017-02-27T08:37:52","modified_gmt":"2017-02-27T14:37:52","slug":"physicist-mildred-dresselhaus-queen-of-carbon-dies-at-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/physicist-mildred-dresselhaus-queen-of-carbon-dies-at-86\/","title":{"rendered":"Physicist Mildred Dresselhaus, \u2018Queen of Carbon,\u2019 dies at 86"},"content":{"rendered":"

(JTA) \u2014 Physicist Mildred Dresselhaus,\u00a0the daughter of impoverished Polish Jewish immigrants whose pioneering research\u00a0into the thermal and electrical properties\u00a0of carbon earned her the nickname \u201cQueen of Carbon,\u201d has died.<\/p>\n

Dresselhaus, who also was an advocate for women in science fields, died Monday at 86.<\/p>\n

Her research was foundational to the field called nanoscience, in which matter is manipulated at an atomic and\u00a0molecular\u00a0level. Her pioneering work earned her the $1 million Kavli Prize in Nanoscience in 2012, the National Medal of Science, the Presidential Medal of Freedom\u00a0and IEEE Medal of Honor, the highest award of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.<\/p>\n

Dresselhaus had gained wider fame in recent weeks with her\u00a0starring role in a television commercial promoting General Electric\u2019s efforts to promote women in science. The commercial,\u00a0titled \u201cWhat If Scientists Were Celebrities?\u201d imagines a world in which\u00a0young girls dress up as Dresselhaus, glossy magazines feature her on\u00a0their covers and gossip columns keep tabs on her comings and goings.<\/p>\n

Abbi Jacobson, the Jewish actress who stars in \u201cBroad City,\u201d appears briefly in\u00a0the ad as a Dresselhaus fan.<\/p>\n

Dresselhaus, nee Mildred Spiewak, was born in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn\u00a0in 1930 and grew up in the Bronx.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bronx, I remember, was a very poor neighborhood, but that was all that immigrants could afford at that time,\u201d she recalled in a 2013 interview<\/a>. \u201cLife was tough. I grew up \u2014\u00a0my father didn\u2019t have a job, but there weren\u2019t too many people who did have jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The prestigious\u00a0Bronx High School of Science was not open to girls in her day,\u00a0so she attended the selective Hunter College High School in Manhattan. She received a bachelor\u2019s degree in 1951 from Hunter College, where she took an elementary physics class with another daughter of Jewish immigrants, Rosalyn Yalow, a future Nobel laureate in medicine. Dresselhaus often said it was\u00a0Yalow who pushed her to go down the path of science and physics at a time when educated women were expected to become secretaries, nurses or\u00a0teachers.<\/p>\n

Dresselhaus went on to earn a master\u2019s degree from Radcliffe College and a doctorate from the University of Chicago.<\/p>\n

Two years after her marriage to fellow physicist Gene Dresselhaus in 1958, both were offered faculty positions at MIT. In 1968 she became a professor at MIT, where her research led to advances in carbon-based materials used in solid-state electronics.<\/p>\n

As early as the\u00a0mid-1970s she became a public advocate for women in engineering and science, and\u00a0mentored countless young women during her time at MIT. Later in her career, MIT named her institute professor emerita, its highest distinction, and she continued teaching and researching until shortly before she died.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been lucky,\u201d she said in 2013. \u201cI\u2019ve been at a place that\u2019s a meritocracy. It doesn\u2019t really matter that much what your gender is if you do the work well. I think women benefit from being in places and having positions where the quality of work is the criteria, not what you look like. Not every place is like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dresselhaus is survived by her husband, their\u00a0four children and five grandchildren.<\/p>\n

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