Taking the lead
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Taking the lead Interview with Mildred S. Dresselhaus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Martha Cotter: You came from a situation of poverty and disadvantage and were offered little encouragement to pursue education. Mary Hartman: What was it that made you set your sights on passing that entrance examination for Hunter High School [a very competitive high school in New York, then all-female], the experience of success that put you on the path to so much more success? Mildred Dresselhaus: One of the overriding things for many who grow up in poverty is the simple desire to escape. I think it was sort of obvious to me that escape had to be through education. There is another side to my story that has to do with music school, which taught me a lot more than music by giving me an opportunity to meet people who were in easier socioeconomic circumstances. I was bound to ask myself, how do I go *M.S. Hartman, editor, Talking Leadership: Conversations with Powerful Women (Rutgers University Press, 1999). ©1999 by Rutgers, The State University. Excerpts reprinted by permission of Rutgers University Press.
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particular discrimination against kids from the wrong side of the tracks except when it came to going to college and career planning. MH: You mean to say that with that splendid high school record you weren’t taken aside and encouraged to apply to various colleges?
Photo credit: Donna Coveney/MIT
The science community has long recognized Mildred Dresselhaus’s pioneering research on the physics of solids and highly values her current work on carbon nanostructures. While researchers are familiar with her as a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they may be less aware of her contributions to other aspects of the field. About nine years ago, she was interviewed for an anthology on women in leadership roles.* Since she was the only scientist interviewed, her views presented a unique perspective from the usual assembly of political figures, CEOs, and university presidents for such collections. In the interview conducted by Mary S. Hartman, director of the Institute for Women’s Leadership at Douglass College, the college for women at Rutgers University, and Martha A. Cotter, then vice chair for the graduate program of the Department of Chemistry at Rutgers University, Dresselhaus provides insight on how she became a leader and her choices on which activities to lead. This article contains excerpts of this interview, in which she speaks frankly about inspirations not typically discussed at scientific venues and shares her contributions to the science community as well as to society at-large. –Editors, MRS Bulletin
from where I am to where those kids are, and education was the means. It wasn’t so much studying the violin, which I did and I’m still an avid player today. It was that cultural activities became an avenue to get to a new level. So what helped me is a vision of something different from what I saw around me. MC: Let me back up a bit. You said you didn’
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