LAUSR

S. Dresselhaus laid the foundation for carbon nano-technology. She pioneered techniques to study materials that were just one atom thick, and predicted the possibility and characteristics of nanotubes. From the 1950s, she explored how atomic configurations control how materials conduct heat and electricity, and how these and other properties could be manipulated. Her work has been crucial for developing lithium-ion batteries, electronic devices, renewable-energy generators and much more. For her insights on the Universe's fourth most-abundant element, she was nicknamed the " queen of carbon science ". Dresselhaus, who died on 20 February, will also be remembered for her never-dimming enthusiasm, and for her efforts to remove barriers for women in science and engineering. She had enthusiastic fans. A campaign to promote women in science portrayed Dresselhaus as " One in a Millie " and worthy of rock-star fame. A Lego figure (pictured) was designed in her honour. Born Mildred Spiewak in 1930 in New York City, to Polish–Jewish immigrants, Millie, as her students and colleagues knew her, grew up in a rough area of the Bronx during the Great Depression. Old issues of National Geographic nurtured her interest in science. An early talent for music won her free violin lessons, and brought her into contact with more-advantaged families, who convinced her that education was important. Prompted by them, she sought and gained admission to Hunter College High, an elite girls' school in New York City. Later, at the city's Hunter College, the medical physicist (and later Nobel prizewinner) Rosalyn Yalow urged her to go to graduate school. Dresselhaus completed a master's degree at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1953. This allowed her to take science classes at Harvard University , but she still had to take exams separately from the men. She did her PhD, on the properties of superconduc-tors in a magnetic field, at the University of Chicago, Illinois, with nuclear-physics Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi. For her experiments, she repurposed surplus equipment from work in nuclear fission to make superconducting wire and microwave instruments. She met and married physics postdoc Gene Dresselhaus in 1958. In 1960, after stints at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, both were given staff jobs at the Lincoln Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. Dresselhaus began work on the electronic and optical properties of semimetals, substances such as bismuth and graphite that share properties with metals and non-metals. …