Editor’s Note: This post was last updated on 22 March, and it will continue to be updated as friends and colleagues of Dresselhaus submit their remembrances.
Credit: Bryce Vickmark, MIT
Mildred Dresselhaus, the “queen of carbon science,” passed away 20 February at age 86.
Dresselhaus was born Mildred Spiewak in Brooklyn, New York, on 11 November 1930. She received a PhD in physics from the University of Chicago at a time when about 2% of those earning physics PhDs were women. In 1968 Dresselhaus became the first tenured woman in MIT’s School of Engineering. She studied the electronic band structure of graphite and other carbon structures, an innovative line of research that led to the discovery of fullerenes (including buckyballs), carbon nanotubes, and graphene. She also pioneered experimental techniques to study the electronic and thermal properties of thin materials.
Dresselhaus served as president of both the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Among other honors, she was awarded the National Medal of Science (1990), the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience (2012), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2014). Earlier this month, General Electric began airing the commercial below, envisioning a society that celebrated scientists like Dresselhaus the way it does athletes, actors, and musicians.
To us and to many, Millie Dresselhaus was an icon. We hope to carry her work forward to celebrate all women in STEM. pic.twitter.com/YZ9rSDczF3
Dresselhaus, or “Millie” as many called her, made such an impact that we reached out to some of her colleagues and former students. As of 22 March, there are 17 contributors: Michelle Buchanan, Sandra Brown, Gang Chen, Marcie Black, Vincent Meunier, Shirley Ann Jackson, Joseph Heremans, Ado Jorio, Antonio Gomes Souza Filho, Aviva Brecher, Morinobu Endo, David Tomanek, Marcos Pimenta, Paulo T. Araujo, Elena Rogacheva, Riichiro Saito, and H. Frederick Dylla. Their responses are below.
If you have your own Millie stories to share, please leave a comment or send us an email.
Michelle Buchanan Associate laboratory director for physical sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
My daughter, an assistant chemistry professor who has been a great Millie “fan” since seeing her speak in graduate school, saw the GE commercial during a program on Monday and sent it to me, not knowing that Millie had passed away. How uncanny is it that it shows her as a scientist celebrity. She truly was—and she will remain a role model for many young women for years to come.
Click here to continue reading…
In addition to her groundbreaking research, Millie contributed to science and science policy in many ways. She headed the Department of Energy Office of Science in 2000–2001, where she oversaw fundamental research in areas of materials, chemistry, biology, computing, and physics. I had the privilege of working with her in 2003, along with George Crabtree, to organize one of the first “Basic Research Needs Workshops” produced by the DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) on the “hydrogen economy.” During the workshop, she originated the format for what has now become an extremely impactful series of workshop reports that has shaped the research of BES for over a decade.
It was during this time that I became aware of her indefatigable energy. After the workshop concluded, we were deep into writing the workshop report; however, Millie had to fly immediately to Israel to receive an award, back to Boston, then to Argentina to give a presentation, and then directly to Northwestern University—all in less than a week. Such a schedule would have defeated people two decades younger; however, she read drafts and sent faxes of her detailed comments from airports and wherever she could so we could finish the report. Frankly, it was all George and I could do to keep up with her while she was flying between three continents. It was during this process, however, that I learned from her how important it was to contribute to shaping the future of science through these types of workshops and reports. And even though she was constantly busy with her own research and presenting invited talks all over the world, she always generously gave her time to help the greater scientific community.
Millie was also dedicated to chamber music and immensely enjoyed playing the violin and viola. Her brother, Irving Spiewak, was a well-known nuclear engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and he, too, played the violin as concertmaster in the Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra.
Sandra Brown Vice president of intellectual property and legal affairs, Akili Interactive Labs
In describing her experiences studying with Enrico Fermi, Millie reportedly said it “was what you did that counted, and that followed me through life.” As a former student, I can attest that what Millie did counted. She conducted thoughtful, brilliant research. She gave us all examples of persistence, integrity, and dedication. Millie didn’t just create a lab, she created a family. She worked with us to ensure we succeeded. As a testament to her record, there are fewer than 10 African-American women in history with a PhD in physics from MIT. Two of us graduated from Millie’s lab.
Click here to continue reading…
Millie kept her word. Even after graduation, students would constantly come back to Millie for advice, counseling, recommendations, or even just a sanity check. She constantly had people vying for her attention. I recalled sometimes Millie would say “I’m finite.” Yet she would immediately go off and do the seeming impossible. When Millie promised you something, she delivered.
Millie was not only a great scientist and thoughtful mentor. She was also a truly genuine and sincere person. One of the proudest days of my life was when Millie met my parents, blue-collar workers and first-generation immigrants from a developing country. Millie shook their hands with the kind of warmth she’s shown to presidents, princes, and dignitaries. She had a way of making you feel like you mattered, regardless of your status or start. For that, I would never be able to thank her enough.
Millie is inimitable and irreplaceable. It’s hard to imagine the science world without her.
Gang Chen Professor of power engineering and head of the department of mechanical engineering, MIT
For many of us who worked closely with Millie, she was a mentor that we revered, admired, and always looked forward to spending time with. In a letter to Technology Review, I wrote, “At MIT, there are many Jedi knights, but Millie stands out as our Yoda. Students and faculty members alike seek out her advice and opinions about a wide range of problems, in both their research and personal lives. Warm and open, she is always receptive, ready to work, and willing to help. She has earned respect all over the world and made friends both old and young.”
Click here to continue reading…
I started collaborating with Millie 20 years ago, when I was an assistant professor at Duke University writing a proposal on thermoelectrics. At that time, although I was working on phonon heat conduction in low-dimensional structures, I did not know anything about thermoelectrics. Millie welcomed me with an open mind and entrusted me with leading a large project on a topic that she pioneered through a series of papers she published with Lyndon Hicks in 1993 on exploiting low-dimensional effects to improve thermoelectric energy conversion. That started a collaboration that continued until her death. This is a very typical example, as she collaborated with many young researchers from different disciplines.
When I was a faculty member at UCLA, she stopped by my office many times, following Caltech’s Board of Trustee meetings. We discussed research until late at night, and after these fruitful discussions, she took a red-eye back to MIT to start a new day. She always carried that same black suitcase and a bag (they are heavy), filled with papers and documents she was reading and revising. Every time, she would ask me to find a fax machine to send back to her husband, Gene Dresselhaus, and her assistant Laura Doughty a thick deck of papers she has characteristically marked down with her red and sometimes blue pens. Of course, I also received lots of such faxed pages as well as original ones. It took me some time to be able to decipher her beautiful handwriting. I wish I could say that my writing had improved a lot by learning from her corrections, but I cannot be certain as whatever I asked her to read and comment, it always came back similarly marked down.
Since I joined MIT, for which Millie played an important role, we met almost every week. Every time we met, I learned something from her, sometimes about research and often about life. She kept reminding me that I need to pay attention to my own health and my family, and she remembered everyone in my family. And yet as my wife Tracy would attest, I always use Millie as my defense because whatever I do is so little compared to her. She provided daily inspiration. I habitually searched for her car every morning when I arrived early morning on MIT campus. For me, her car was iconic. It was a Toyota Corolla, parked on the same spot, on weekdays and weekends, and during holidays. MIT does not have any assigned parking spots, and yet she had a fixed one as she was always at office before 6:00am. Her husband Gene usually was the driver. For the last few years, Gene could no longer drive. She hired someone to drive her to MIT, yet, her car was still always there before 6:00am.
Millie loved walking. She walked with her husband, she walked with young people and old friends. When we attended the International Conference on Thermoelectrics in Nagoya, I walked with her every day from the hotel to the conference location, a good 50 minutes walk! She once invited me to her house for lunch and a walk. The lunch was simple, a bagel, and the walk was long, but time went fast. Walking with her was such a pleasure. Her talking was calm and smooth, but the stories were fully of lessons and wisdom. I learned so much! Now, I walk every night with my wife, and encourage young people to start such walks early in their lives. It is a great way to communicate.
Millie was a generous and patient mentor. She took in quite a few graduate students who were struggling and mentored them to have successful careers. She always said that these students needed help, and she was at a stage she could do that. Millie served on the thesis committee of more than half of my graduate students and co-supervised many postdocs with me, and she continued to support them after they left here. We wrote over 70 papers together, some of which I am very much proud of, yet it is only a small percentage among her 1700 papers.
After we won a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center (S3TEC Center), she advised me that we should have three thrust meetings and an executive committee meeting every month, and that I should attend every meeting as the director. She volunteered to attend every meeting too. We followed through. I am proud to say our center has been quite successful, and we have built strong bonds and collaborations. When we made a short Star Wars–themed YouTube movie about the center called “Battle against Phonons,” the choice to cast Millie in the role of Yoda was unanimous. She did not need to act, as she was so natural. She is called the Carbon Queen for her pioneering work on carbon nanostructures. To me and many of us, she is our Yoda. She will live among us forever.
Marcie Black Cofounder and CEO, Advanced Silicon Group
Millie was a caring, kind person. She worked tirelessly to move the boundaries of our knowledge through science, but also to help those around her. I am so lucky to have had Millie in my life. I knew Millie for a precious 26 years, since I was a freshman at MIT when she was my academic advisor. Later she supervised my PhD thesis. After graduating, she continued to mentor me.
Click here to continue reading…
Millie prioritized her students second only to her family. In 2001 when she headed the DOE Office of Science, she spent the weekdays in DC. Every weekend she came back to Boston to meet with each of her students and get updated on our work. Millie knew when to push us to do more and when to step back and let us lead our own work. She walked the balance between being there to help us and allowing us to do our independent research. Every paper I gave her to proofread would come back the next day covered in red ink, improving the content and grammar and giving me ideas of which experiments to run next.
Millie was more than an academic advisor to her students—she was a mentor and friend. On Thanksgiving she would make sure everyone had a place to go, and if they didn’t, she would invite them to her house for dinner. She would consistently be there to talk and advise me on topics such as having a family and a career, being a female in a male-dominated field, my possible career choices, or the processes for submitting a review article.
Her leaving us has left such an empty space. No one can ever fill her place, but maybe her memories, her lessons, and all of our Millie stories will allow each of us to be a little bit more like Millie.
Vincent Meunier Head of the physics, applied physics, and astronomy department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
I got a chance to know Millie over the past 20 years or so, since my research has been focused on carbon nanostructures since the mid 1990s. Of course I had met Millie many times at conferences, but we only started to collaborate about 10 years ago when we worked on graphene nanoribbons and then much more, recently, on Raman of layered materials. In addition to meeting her at conferences, I got a chance to travel with her a few times, namely in Mexico for thesis defenses. I was also lucky that she came to visit me at Oak Ridge National Laboratory around 2008 or so. She then came to visit me at RPI a few times to deliver special lectures.
Click here to continue reading…
The last time I saw her was three months ago, when she delivered the “after-dinner talk” of the New York State APS topical meeting on “Physics of layered materials” at Rensselaer. I organized that meeting, and I was honored when she accepted my invitation.
Millie always insisted on the importance of “vibrance” of the workplace. She often repeated that what made MIT a great place was not so much the beautiful campus and buildings, but rather the people who create a certain kind of vibrant environment. Vibrance is a difficult concept to explain with words, but I think she meant an environment conducive to think creatively and with challenges to intelligence. It was she who convinced me that I should seek a position at a university (I was a permanent staff member at ORNL) because she was convinced I needed to be able to interact with students and younger generations to help them reach their potential.
Another aspect of Millie’s approach to science was an amazing stamina when reading and writing were concerned. I remember once when we flew back from Mexico that the flight attendant had to ask her to put away her big pile of papers until we had taken off! She looked at me and said: “I can’t waste time. I’ve tens of papers to review and it is my duty to give back to the community what the community gave me.”
I also remember spending time with Millie after a thesis defense (again, in Mexico). There was a big party to celebrate the student’s achievement. I remember that while we had just started the party of a student (we were both on his thesis committee), she stood up, came to me and the student and said, “Now are we going back to the lab to work on our papers?” I will always remember the expression on the student’s face, in complete disbelief! But we went back to the office, albeit for a very short time, after we told Millie that the student may use some time off!
Millie taught me that any good conference should finish with a “summary lecture.” She often volunteered to do that, well after the end time of the meeting but also to the delight of the organizer. Last November at RPI, she insisted I deliver a summary of the APS symposium. She told me afterward that it is not just an honor, but it is a duty to deliver the summary to make sure the symposium was useful.
Millie most often sat at the very first row in all the conferences she went to. She always asked a question to every speaker, should that person be a Nobel laureate or a first-year student. The questions alone were worth going to the conference! Her questions were never negative, and she never felt like referring to her own work (even though she certainly could have!). She strongly felt that it was important to be polite and collegial. She told me recently that it was never acceptable to be arrogant or aggressive. Pointing to a speaker, she told me: “Look, he’s much less aggressive than usual. I did well to tell him to calm down last time I met him.” I found that interesting, because she always found a way to make people better, but she always made “suggestions” rather than “lessons.”
I recently wrote a long paper with Millie in Reviews of Modern Physics. I asked her to write the conclusion of the paper from a historical point of view. I’m glad I asked her to draft it. I did not realize it could not well be considered as her closing remarks before she left.
Millie liked to promote others and she often told me: “I spend a lot of time writing support letters, but I’m so happy when they are useful for something. I have the impression I have an impact on people.” She would say those few words with her typical smile, slightly raising her shoulders like she felt like asking for forgiveness for saying that.
Finally, she also had wise words about combining leadership roles with science. I remember when I told her I became department head at Rensselaer in 2015. She looked at me with a quizzical look and then said, “Yes, I think it is good for you to develop new experience in that role.” When I told her I was concerned about not being able to be as productive with research, she replied: “Well, I used to be president of the APS, and then worked for DOE and other national duties, but my research did not suffer that much.” She said that with a very gentle voice and certainly not to show off. It was very humbling.
Shirley Ann Jackson President, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Millie was very important to me. I met her when I was a sophomore at MIT. I took a course from her on the electronic properties of materials. I found her brilliant but also inspirational. I admired the quality of her work, her temperament, and how she enjoyed working with young people. And it was important for me to know her story: She was a woman in physics raising her kids at a time when that was even more unusual than it is today. She was also a brilliant lecturer. She gave brilliant talks, and that was reflected in her teaching. And she was very kind. Along the way, at various points in my career, she was very motivational and a good reference for me.
I saw her at a regional meeting of the APS a few months ago. It happened to be on her birthday, and we had a cake for her. She seemed to be in such great shape. I’m going to miss her a lot.
Joseph Heremans Professor of physics and materials science engineering, Ohio State University
Millie’s influence during the rather brief period in 1980 and 1981 that she advised me as a visiting scientist/postdoc was a career-changing event for me, both as a scientist and as a science teacher/manager. Her commitment to her students and postdocs was a career-long one. To this date, I strive to treat my own graduate students as much as possible like she treated me. As a corollary, we remained collaborators from 1980 until the day she passed away—we were co-PIs on an Air Force Office of Science Research initiative that lasted into 2016. In 2013 we wrote a retrospective commentary for Nature Nanotechnology for the 20th anniversary of the celebrated Hicks and Dresselhaus papers that single-handedly rekindled the field of thermoelectrics. Although the results described in those papers were later refined by other authors, as is expected in research, they presented a few basic principles that stimulated the thinking of dozens of scientists. That resulted in a doubling of the figure of merit of thermoelectric materials compared with the value that had been reached in 1960 and had saturated since. Her influence was that of an intellectual catalyst, and the world of science will sorely miss her.
Ado Jorio Professor of physics, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil
The most important thing I learned from Millie was not about materials science, group theory, Raman spectroscopy, or nanotechnology. It was about always looking at the positive, constructive side of things. Millie would never point or criticize the negative aspect of a paper—she would always point to its strength. Millie would hear people’s complaints about the structure of the building, about politics, about whatever, and reply with a comment about the good side of it. When there was no way to see a good side, she would just say “better times will come.” Life with Millie was always very, very, very hard working, but with pleasure, with happiness, with a smile. Millie will never die, because she is a way of living that demonstrates how the life with physics, how the life with science, can be wonderful.
Antonio Gomes Souza Filho Professor of physics and dean for research and graduate affairs, Federal University of Ceará, Brazil
I had the privilege of enjoying 16 years of intense scientific collaboration with Millie. I met her personally for the first time when I arrived at MIT for a one-year stay as a visiting PhD student, and at first glance her empathy enchanted me. As soon as I started to pursue my research topic, I realized that she was a unique mentor not only because her well-known scientific reputation, but also because of her commitment in getting everyone’s project moving with relevant outcomes. I was very impressed by the attention she gave me for the first paper we published. We interacted to improve the physics and readability of that manuscript for two months, and she carefully edited 21 versions; that interaction was enjoyable and full of scientific and life lessons. I realized very clearly that my thesis work, and my career later on, did matter to her very much. I got excited, challenged, and motivated to work and move forward with her hard and enthusiastic approach. I was very happy that she found time in her very busy schedule to come to my thesis committee in Brazil.
Click here to continue reading…
Millie was great at stimulating, challenging, and figuring out the potential of her students and collaborators, and that quality has positively affected me very much. I was amazed at how she trusted me to do things that I did not feel I could do well, such as delivering an oral talk at an APS meeting just three months after arriving at MIT with very poor English and not knowing much about nanotubes. She helped and guided me in several presentations at her group meeting, and in the end I felt that she was happier than I was about my successful APS speech.
As a teacher and mentor, she was inspiring and will serve as a reference for several generations of scientists. The door of her office was always open. Behind piles of papers and books on her desk, Millie always appeared, and with her characteristic voice and smile spoke an inviting and welcoming, “Hi there!” Even though she always had a huge amount of work to do, her kindness and availability to help were amazing. The last time she visited me in Brazil three years ago for a conference, she kindly asked me if I could organize a session with all the students of the physics department. Millie spent two hours talking with dozens of students, answering questions about physics and curiosities about her career. That event has impacted our graduate school because the students were not used to engaging in conversation with such a reputed scientist. I know Millie used to do that in many places, and this kind of attitude summarizes her unique role in promoting science and influencing the new generation of scientists.
Our dear Millie is not physically around us any more, but I am sure her legacy and passion for life and science will keep motivating many people around the world in her honor. Thank you very much Millie, for your lessons, generosity, guidance, and friendship!
Aviva Brecher Retired, former National Technical Expert on Transportation Safety, Environment and Health at US DOT
I was a physics undergraduate at MIT, recently transferred from the Technion in Israel, when Millie arrived in 1967 from Lincoln Lab as Abby Rockefeller Mauzé visiting professor. I was fortunate to take her first solid-state physics course, which was unique: She taught by handing us clear and complete handwritten class notes and asking us to listen, understand, and participate actively by asking questions, just as Fermi had taught her at Chicago. We were so excited that we petitioned Louis Smullin, the electrical engineering chair, to make her permanent faculty, since she was the best, clearest, and most caring teacher we had. She invited me and my husband (Ken Brecher, then a physics graduate student) to her house for dinner, where all four Dresselhaus children helped. The family played quartets after dinner, with Gene turning the pages.
Click here to continue reading…
When I and others prepared to give our first talks at the New York City APS meeting, Millie rehearsed us to make sure we were clear and on time. Although I was doing MS thesis research at the National Magnet Lab with Ben Lax, Millie continued to be my mentor and advise me professionally all my life. When I was considering whether to get a security clearance and do my PhD at Lincoln Lab as Ben urged me, Millie pointed out that I would not be able to publish a classified thesis, nor get a job without refereed journal publications. So I transferred to the University of California, San Diego, where Ken had a postdoctoral appointment.
After my PhD in space sciences with Hannes Alfvén at UCSD, I came back to MIT as a postdoc researcher in earth and planetary sciences to work on the physical properties of the Apollo Moon rocks and on primitive meteorites and early solar system history. Millie came to my first seminar to critique and encourage me, and took time to attend my lectures on Earth as a magnet. She also enlisted me in the first Women Faculty and Staff informal support group she organized, and in the first Women in Physics APS section.
Her life-long selfless career help, advice, and support to me and other MIT women continued for my entire career: When I went to teach at Wellesley, then to teach concourse physics at MIT, and later to retool as technical consultant at Arthur D. Little, she wrote me glowing recommendations. When Ken and I were considering whether to have children, I asked her how she and Gene managed to have busy and successful careers while raising four children. Millie gave me the best and most original life advice about blending work and family: “You must have either two or four children, because kids are like electrons with spin up and spin down in an atom in order to have a stable configuration! One or three children is an unstable state.” Needless to say, we had two kids, though we have achieved only relative stability with our dual careers in physics.
Millie encouraged many of her students to work in industry and government, not just academia. When Millie served as APS president, she convinced me to apply to be an APS Congressional Science Fellow. She steadily strived to bring more scientists to the Hill, and she visited me in Sen. Paul Tsongas’s (D-MA) office while I worked there. She also invited me to give guest lectures in the science and technology policy course she taught that aimed to engage MIT students in policy issues. She urged me to get involved in the APS Forum on Physics and Society and in the AAAS Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy, just before she became AAAS president.
Over my 30 years as a research scientist and strategic planner at the US Department of Transportation Volpe Center in Kendall Square, we stayed in touch. Sometimes I brought an Israeli lunch to Millie’s office to touch base on science and policy and life issues. I am now retired from Volpe Center as National Technical Expert on Transportation Safety, Environment and Health. Recently I was still exchanging emails with Millie. At the end of January she wrote me: “I am still working and enjoying physics. I have a big reason for remaining working. These are interesting times.”
Morinobu Endo Professor of electrical and electronic engineering, Shinshu University, Japan
I met Professor Dresselhaus for the first time at the international conference on graphite intercalation compounds held in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in May 1980. At that time, I had been avidly reading her papers on graphite, since I was working on vapor-grown carbon fibers as a 35-year-old research assistant. I knew she was already a world-renowned expert on carbon, and I had dreamed of working with her. Fortunately, she thought it would be very interesting to compare her three-dimensional graphite to the thin one-dimensional carbon fibers I had been synthesizing. I was very happy to start a collaboration with her, and in 1982 we published our first joint paper in Physical Review. Our collaboration ended up spanning 37 years and more than 150 publications.
Click here to continue reading…
During all these years working together, I had many good opportunities to learn from her personally, and I treasure countless good memories of her. One such moment was in 2009 when Leora Cooper, Millie’s granddaughter, came to my laboratory at Shinshu University for a short-term research visit. Leora carried out very hard work under the joint supervision of Yoong Ahm Kim (now at Chonnam National University) and me. Millie occasionally arranged short visits to our laboratory for collaboration. We published results in collaboration with Leora, Millie, and other researchers. I believed that Millie was very happy and when we talked about it—her look was of not only the one of a research colleague, but also of a proud grandmother.
One of Millie’s most impressive qualities was her strong devotion for work. No matter how late at night, no matter how early in the morning, Millie always quickly responded to my research-related inquiries. I remember one occasion when I had to travel from Boston to New York on a midnight flight. I stayed in her lab until the last minute, and even thought it was very late, she and her husband, Dr. Gene Dresselhaus, courteously took me to the Boston airport. I can say her lifestyle as a researcher was: “Research is life, and life is research.” As a scientist, I always remember that as the basis of Millie ‘s attitude toward science.
I had the privilege of being invited many times to Millie’s house for dinner. She was a diligent person who could enjoy everyday tasks such as making dishes. She was the busy teacher who could get up early in the morning to prepare her cooking, and at night immediately come home to prepare a delicious full-course dinner. While strict when dealing with research results, she was always gentle, warm, and encouraging in her relations with other scientists. For all these reasons, she was recognized as a common mother for researchers all over the world. And I’ll never forget her happy smile when she said to me at her house, at Christmas season, that tomorrow we had a home concert for the whole family. I played violin.
David Tomanek Professor of physics, Michigan State University
On 20 February we lost one of the foremost and highly respected personalities in science. Mildred S. Dresselhaus left behind an unforgettable imprint as a scientist and a human. While her achievements have been recognized by many of the highest awards available in science, she has also had a significant impact on governmental science and education policies, caring particularly for the young generation.
It’s equally unusual to find the name of a scientist becoming as closely associated with a key element on the periodic table as Dresselhaus become with carbon, earning her the nickname “queen of carbon science.”
Click here to continue reading…
In other words, Millie, as she is affectionately called by many, has become known as the definitive world expert in carbon-based materials. She has had significant impact on the field of graphite intercalation compounds, a key component in today’s lithium-ion batteries. Her involvement in graphitic carbon grew after the discovery of the buckyball and the synthesis of this and other fullerenes in bulk quantities, igniting interest in nanoscale structures and nanotechnology as an emerging field. Millie’s pioneering research has established Raman spectroscopy as the most convenient tool to distinguish specific carbon allotropes, from fullerenes to nanotubes to graphene, and to characterize their quality. Her insight into graphitic nanostructures formed the basis for a simple quantitative description of optical and vibrational spectra of nanocarbons, including the dependence of the fundamental band gap of carbon nanotubes on their chiral index and the radial breathing mode frequency on their diameter. Being an expert in “anything carbon” has not precluded Millie from contributing significantly to other areas of nanotechnology, including the recently discovered phosphorene.
I remember Millie particularly well from her participating at the 1999 Nanotube conference (NT99) in East Lansing. She not only presented an invited talk there, but she also used the opportunity to discuss her other results in a poster presentation. Unbeknown to most, she sneaked away one evening to play violin, accompanied on the flute by Sumio Iijima, a scientific giant in the nanotube field. I consider Millie’s continuous involvement in the NT series to be a major reason for the subsequent annual conferences to become the most prominent international event in the field of nanotubes, attracting hundreds of participants from around the world. With her wisdom and knowledge, Millie has impressed conference participants for well over a decade by presenting a scientific summary at the conclusion of each conference, reviewing highlights, emerging challenges, and suggesting the most promising directions for future research. We all will miss her a lot.
Marcos Pimenta Professor of physics, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil
In 1997 I decided to take a sabbatical in the US. My project was on Raman spectroscopy in carbon materials, so I conducted some bibliographic research on these topics and found the name of three potential advisors. Only Mildred Dresseulhaus answered my message. She said that she had forwarded my inquiry to Peter Eklund, in Kentucky, who was doing experiments in carbon nanotubes using Raman spectroscopy. I acknowledged her response, but I said that my wife was also trying to pursue her studies, and Boston would provide many opportunities for her. Millie then wrote me back, saying: “OK, in this case you can come work at MIT.”
Click here to continue reading…
During my sabbatical, Millie and I started the Raman experiments in nanotubes at MIT. After my return to Brazil in 1998, we started a long and very productive collaboration. Many young Brazilian scientists went to work with Millie at MIT, and between 2001 and 2012 she came 11 times to Brazil for collaborations and conferences. After taking a very long overnight flight from the US to Brazil, Millie used to come directly to the university and work the whole day. The picture below is Millie, in my laboratory, after an overnight flight.
Millie travelled many times a year for different places, and she could not get sick. So she was careful with food. She never ate salad but only cooked food and fruits. She loved Brazilian fruits, and every Brazilian colleague and student used to bring her different delicious fruits.
In 2005 Millie visited Brazil along with Riichiro Saito from Japan. I took them to my country house in the mountains. The students decided to take a difficult route and to go swim in the waterfalls. Millie was 75 and decided to walk to the waterfalls. When she got there she removed her shoes and went into the water. She liked to show that she was able to do everything the students could do.
I used to meet Millie very often at scientific conferences. She stayed the whole time, attending all sessions and taking notes of everything. Sometimes she used to sleep during the talk while taking notes. Since the pen remained on the paper, we could see some ink spots, which showed that she was sleeping. After the end of the talk, she used to ask very tough questions, showing that she was sleeping but processing all information. During the conferences, she used to take a heavy bag with books and many papers to edit and review. I always asked to carry her bag, but normally she didn’t accept any help, showing that she was able to carry her heavy bag.
She used to travel a lot and always take the luggage as carry-on. She didn’t accept any help with carrying her luggage. Once in Brazil, the airline decided to put her in the beginning of the line. She was angry and didn’t accept that, because she could stay in the normal line as everyone else.
Millie used to play violin in a quartet two or three times a week and, when I visited MIT in 2005, she invited me to play guitar in a quartet at her house. It was a hard piece with five parts. Since I am very slow to read music, I could study only the first part of the piece. On Friday I went to her house to play the piece, and I was only able to play the first part correctly. I was very ashamed because I couldn’t play the other parts. When the rest of them finished the piece, Millie asked everybody to play the first part again, just to make be happier.
Near the end of my sabbatical in 1998, Millie was happy with my work and invited me to go to her house for lunch. Since I did my PhD in France, I was expecting a nice lunch with fancy food. When I arrived, half of the dining room table was covered by piles of papers and books. We sat at the clear part of the table, and she brought bagels with cream cheese for lunch. She didn’t want to waste time cooking. During the group meetings, we used to eat pizza. Millie and Gene would mix together orange juice and Coca Cola.
Paulo T. Araujo Assistant professor of physics, University of Alabama
I had the pleasure of working closely with Millie for the past six and a half years. I joined her group at MIT in 2010. By that time I already knew the unique researcher she was, but it was a privilege to realize that she was a unique person as well. She was always nice and gentle to everybody. Even with a ton of things on her plate, she would always find time to talk to whomever knocked on her door (with a huge smile, BTW). She would always say: “We need to help people succeed,” and “We should be kind with people.”
Click here to continue reading…
I never heard Millie make a comment that was not constructive. She was always looking for the best in people, and she was always trying to understand what she needed to do so that the people working with her would perform at their very best. In each paper we worked on together, Millie would patiently revise line by line. For every English mistake, she would have comments to explain why it was a mistake and what to do to fix it. For every step given in the right direction, she would celebrate with you and let you know you did well. For every wrong step, she would find a way to comment on it without putting you down. For Millie, your age or for how long you have been doing science did not matter. She would listen to you even if you were saying things she had known for a long time; she would thank you if you taught her something that she did not know.
Millie had a huge impact on my personal and professional life. She often gave me good advice and suggestions. Some of them I understood immediately; I am still digesting lots of others, day by day, in my job as the PI of a research group. In fall 2014 she came to visit me at the University of Alabama, and it was obvious how happy she was when she realized that my group was developing well. I hope she realized how much of her legacy exists in my group and how much I appreciated every minute of her time. She would often write me short emails asking if everything was fine and if she could help me with something, if I needed anything. In the end, I came to realize that Millie was tirelessly taking care of her scientific family—and she did that until her last day at MIT. Millie made a difference without a shadow of doubt. It was a privilege to have her as a mentor and as a friend.
Elena Rogacheva Professor of physics, National Technical University Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute, Kharkiv, Ukraine
I met Millie in 1997 at the Materials Research Society conference in San Francisco. We discussed the possibility of joint research on the thermoelectric properties of low-dimensional structures. I was particularly interested in such collaboration because Millie had theoretically predicted the possibility of a significant enhancement of ZT in low-dimensional structures, and we were studying the thermoelectric properties of thin films and superlattices experimentally. We did not have much time to talk at the conference, but I was impressed by Millie’s ability to grasp the essence immediately and see the potential. She responded positively, and our long-standing collaboration started.
Click here to continue reading…
Millie is named the Queen of Carbon, but apart of carbon, she was interested in so many things. Being highly open-minded, she always managed to find time for new projects, to explore new directions. Brilliant mind, deep insight, perfect scientific intuition—these are just a few of her characteristics as a scientist. I always admired her ability to concentrate on things. Millie did not waste a single moment, knowing that time is the most precious resource. Having the tightest of schedules, she never kept us waiting for her reply. Millie’s work was related to energy problems, but she had an inexhaustible source of energy inside. It seemed it would last forever.
Our collaboration proved to be not only fruitful and intellectually rewarding but also personally enjoyable. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull guy”—it was not about Millie. She had time for everything and for fun too. Over the course of our collaboration with Millie’s laboratory, my colleague Olga Nashchekina and I visited MIT several times. During one of our stays, Millie and Gene took us to Walden Pond. We had a great time there, walking around the lake. Another time Millie and Gene invited us to their friend’s house, where we enjoyed some music. Millie played the violin, her son Carl the cello, and their friend the piano. Specially for us, they played pieces by Russian composers. It was fascinating and done professionally, proving the saying that talented people are talented at everything.
Millie meant so much to us. It was a privilege and pleasure to know her and to work with her. We are left with the warmest memories. She inspires us.
Riichiro Saito Professor of physics, Tohoku University, Japan
From October 1991 to February 2017, I collaborated with Millie Dresselhaus on carbon nanotubes, graphene, and two-dimensional materials.
At age 31 I had the opportunity to visit MIT for 10 months. During that time Millie and her husband Gene taught me the subject of carbon nanotubes. We kept up the collaboration for more than 25 years, with the exchange of emails daily. Even though Millie was always very busy, whenever I sent the draft of a paper or book by email before going home for the evening, I had it back in the morning; she would take advantage of the time difference between Boston and Japan to edit when I was sleeping. I’d receive a scanned file from Gene with Millie’s handwriting all over the paper. I sometimes saw a big dot of ink, which I guess meant that she dozed off with her green-colored pen touching the paper. This use of the internet and the time difference continued for 25 years, and it was very efficient for us to perform many important and extensive works.
Click here to continue reading…
After my initial visit, I returned frequently to MIT in the summertime with my family or students to find new research subjects. We were always invited to the home of Millie and Gene on Saturdays for a bagel lunch, with fresh vegetables from Wilson’s Farm. After lunch Millie and Gene would take us to the New England countryside for hour-long walks. My family liked to find and pick wild blueberries on the footpath. My daughters considered Millie and Gene to be grandparents, even though my children do not speak English.
Several times a year Millie would come to Japan, always with a heavy bag of papers in hand. Morinobu Endo and I would make a very precise schedule for discussing many papers, including during the train ride from the airport to Narita. Since 2000 many researchers around the world have joined our collaboration for Raman spectroscopy of nanotubes, and the research group has turned into a big family. We’ve come up with an efficient process for shuttling drafts of papers. Each paper is sent from collaborator to collaborator in the direction of Earth’s rotation.
Although I am still not at the age that Millie was when I met her in 1991, I learned a lot from her during our long collaboration. I still do not fully understand how busy Millie was, since she was involved in so many activities for society. Up to the very last week, the style of her daily email responses from her Blackberry and iPad didn’t change. I could not believe that the last day suddenly came. I’ve had a big hole in my heart that cannot be filled. My colleagues and I would like to follow and continue the great philosophy of science established by Millie Dresselhaus. I sincerely thank her for encouraging the young scientists of the world.
H. Frederick Dylla Executive director emeritus, American Institute of Physics
I was fortunate to spend most of my scientific life knowing Millie Dresselhaus. I began my undergraduate education in physics at MIT in the year (1968) that Millie was promoted to a full professor—the first woman to be given that honor. I recall hoping that distinction would become less of a rarity than I observed in my undergraduate class of nearly 100 fellow physics students, which was enriched only with 10 very bright women. That small fraction was still nearly 10 times higher than those at other US colleges and universities at the time. I first became aware of Millie’s growing reputation as an expert for all forms of the element carbon when I began my PhD research in 1971. I spent the next four years developing a new kind of electron microscope that could image delicate biological samples without causing damage to the structure and function of the sample. It turned out I needed a special form of carbon on my samples to test the technique. Having the world’s expert and her students in the next building at MIT solved my problem.
Click here to continue reading…
After graduating from MIT, I spent the next 15 years at Princeton’s Plasma Physics Laboratory, as a material scientist hired to work on the difficult “first wall” problem for magnetic fusion devices. Three large “tokamak” machines were under design and construction at Princeton when I arrived as a postdoc in 1975. Over the next 15 years, I found myself returning to Millie’s research on carbon as I designed specific forms of carbon that could withstand exposures to high heat fluxes and helped develop techniques for removing unwanted carbon impurities from reactor vessel walls.
The next stop in my career, in 1990, was joining the scientific staff at Jefferson Lab, a DOE accelerator facility in Newport News, Virginia. I found myself in the thick of helping to design and build two large accelerators that required me to call on Millie’s continued portfolio of expertise on various forms of carbon. One form of carbon capable of absorbing radiofrequency energy at superconducting temperatures became a small magic bullet that enabled the operation of the Jefferson Lab accelerators and all superconducting accelerators that have since been built worldwide. In the middle of my stint of Jefferson Lab, I was exposed to her steady and knowledgeable hand as an administrator when she was appointed director of the Office of Science for DOE. She had to deal with the complicated budgets and politics of DOE’s national laboratories and myriad university research programs, but she still found time to devote to her students at MIT. For the first time I was involved with research that directly overlapped her current interests—a unique form of carbon called nanotubes. These small tubes having widths of atomic dimensions would turn out to have wide application to electronics and high-strength structures. My colleagues at Jefferson Lab were making more of a purified form of these nanotubes than anyone else using the lab’s powerful free-electron laser facility.
The next stop in my career brought me even closer to Millie’s wide sphere of influence. In 2007 Millie was in the middle of a five-year term as the chair of the governing board of the American Institute of Physics, a federation of 10 scientific societies representing more than 135 000 scientists and engineers. In that year, I was selected by Millie and her board as AIP’s next executive director. This is when I really got to know Millie up close and to find out what a remarkable person she was. Her love of science, her dedication to teaching (including working with “students” like me in their late 50s), and her ability to wrangle through knotty administrative problems were on full display. During quiet moments over a shared cup of tea, I was exposed to her equal love for music and the numerous opportunities she found in her busy life to share music making and appreciation with her family. I missed the adventure of frequent interactions with Millie when she completed her term as AIP’s board chair in 2009. But we stayed in touch through encounters at scientific meetings and emails on shared interests, which continued to grow since my first encounter with the “Queen of Carbon” in 1968. My colleagues and I at AIP were enthusiastic supporters of Millie’s nomination for the Presidential Medal of Freedom that she was so rightly awarded in 2014.
I will miss that spunky lady in her signature red sweater and ready smile.
