The Legacy of Professor Mildred S. Dresselhaus

Abstract

Millie was born in Brooklyn in 1930 and raised in Bronx, NY. She went to Hunter College High School in New York and continued to pursue her undergraduate degree at Hunter College, where she was introduced to physics research by Rosalyn Yalow, a future recipient of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Yalow recognized Millie's talents and encouraged her to continue further education in physics. Upon graduating from Hunter College in 1951, Millie continued her postgraduate study at the University of Cambridge on a 2-year Fulbright Fellowship and then at Harvard University, where she received her MA from Radcliffe College. In 1958 she received her PhD degree from the University of Chicago under physics Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi and then spent 2 years at Cornell University as a postdoc before moving to the Lincoln Laboratory as a staff member. She became a visiting professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1967, was offered a tenured professorship in 1968, and then became a professor of physics in 1983. In 1985, she was appointed the first female institute professor at MIT.

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