Mildred Dresselhaus, the ‘Queen of Carbon Science,’ Has IEEE Medal Named in Her Honor

The late MIT professor paved the way for the rise of nanotechnology

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Professor Mildred Dresselhaus with an ultra high vacuum surface analysis system for imaging and characterizing thin film organic and inorganic materials and devices in the soft semiconductor lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Photo: Micheline Pelletier/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images)

Professor Mildred Dresselhaus with an ultra high vacuum surface analysis system for imaging and characterizing thin film organic and inorganic materials and devices in the soft semiconductor lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Mildred Dresselhaus next to an ultra high vacuum surface analysis system for imaging and characterizing thin film organic and inorganic materials and devices in the soft semiconductor lab at MIT.Photo: Micheline Pelletier/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

THE INSTITUTE The new IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal, sponsored by Google, honors the late MIT professor of physics and electrical engineering, who did groundbreaking work on carbon and its thermal and electrical properties. Dresselhaus, an IEEE life Fellow, was known as the ‘Queen of Carbon Science’ for her lifelong research into the properties of graphite and other carbon-based materials.

For her contributions, she received the 2015 IEEE Medal of Honor, becoming the first woman to win the organization’s highest award. The medal is sponsored by the IEEE Foundation.  

She died in 2017 at the age of 86.

ANNUAL MEDAL

The Dresselhaus Medal recognizes outstanding technical contributions in science and engineering of great impact to IEEE fields of interest. The prize consists of a gold medal and its bronze replica, a certificate, and a cash prize.

The deadline for nominations is 15 June.

The annual award is scheduled to be presented for the first time at the 2021 IEEE Honors Ceremony.

DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR

Dresselhaus became a professor of electrical engineering at MIT in 1967, joined the physics department in 1983, and became an institute professor of electrical engineering and physics in 1985. Her discoveries relating to the structure and properties of graphite encouraged research into single-atom-thick graphene, which conducts electricity at high speed. She made important contributions in the late 1970s to understanding the structure of graphite intercalation compounds.

She also contributed to the study of phonons, thermal transport in nanostructures, and the structure of carbon nanotubes. She studied fullerenes and carbon nanotubes in the early 1990s, before those structures were well known.

Throughout her career, she received numerous awards including a 2014 U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the government’s highest civilian honor. “Her influence is all around us—in the cars we drive, the energy we generate, the electronic devices that power our lives,” President Obama said at the ceremony.

To learn more about Dresselhaus and her career, you can watch a 2016 IEEE.tv profile and read the transcript of a 2013 interview conducted by the IEEE History Center.

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