Carbon Queen

Starred review from November 22, 2021
Weinstock, deputy editorial director at MIT News, highlights the many scientific contributions of nanotechnologist Mildred “Millie” Dresselhaus (1930–2017) in this striking portrait of a brilliant mind. Born Mildred Spiewak in Brooklyn to Polish and Dutch immigrants, Dresselhaus didn’t have an easy childhood, but her curiosity, willingness to work hard, and ability to relate to others, along with her musical prowess, opened doors. Dresselhaus faced gender discrimination during her early years in academia and science (she was told she had three career options: teacher, nurse, or secretary), but, as Weinstock shows, she found encouragement from her husband Gene, and from trailblazers such as Nobel Prize winner Rosalyn Sussman Yalow. Dresselhaus broke ground herself, both by focusing her research on carbon when it was not a sought-after field and by using the leadership positions she earned at MIT and elsewhere to pave the way for women in the sciences. While Dresselhaus never won a Nobel, her list of accolades includes the Kavli Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Weinstock includes numerous diagrams of various carbon structures to illustrate Dresselhaus’s work, but perhaps the most impressive diagram is the one that depicts the multitude of collaborators on her nearly 1,700 publications. This is a fascinating introduction to a game-changing figure.

Starred review from March 15, 2022
When the mathematically gifted but impecunious Mildred Spiewak launched her academic career at Hunter College in 1948, she aimed at no more than qualifying for "something better than work in a zipper factory." In chronicling the stunningly successful path that Spiewak subsequently traversed as a research scientist, Weinstock leaves readers grateful that this gifted woman found settings far better than a zipper factory. We see how--before Spiewak joined her life, her career, and her name to those of her husband, solid-state theorist Gene Dresselhaus--she found her own footing as a fearless female scientist under the mentorship of Rosalyn Sussman Yalow, Nobel laureate in medicine. Though Weinstock takes readers into some of the scientific complexities behind the revolutionary carbon nanotubes that Mildred Dresselhaus developed, she also brings into view the exceptionally multivalent personal relationships Dresselhaus fashioned while bearing and caring for four children. Readers see how the same energy and intellectual resourcefulness that enabled Dresselhaus to perceive previously undetected structural characteristics of graphite also helped her envision and create an academic environment more open to and more supportive of women, especially those from ethnic minorities. An exceptional biography showcasing the achievements of a brilliant scientist who broadened the range of the possible for women.

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