Mildred Dresselhaus Quotes

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Mildred Dresselhaus

Profession : Scientist

Birth : November 11, 1930

The Bronx, I remember, was a very poor neighborhood, but that was all that immigrants could afford at that time. Life was tough. I grew up - my father didn't have a job, but there weren't too many people who did have jobs.

Mildred Dresselhaus

I've been lucky. I've been at a place that's a meritocracy. It doesn't really matter that much what your gender is if you do the work well.

Mildred Dresselhaus

I think women benefit from being in places and having positions where the quality of work is the criteria, not what you look like. Not every place is like that.

Mildred Dresselhaus

In the process of making nanomaterials, we learned that with the electronic density of states, the phonon electronic properties and everything change at the nano-level. So the thermoelectric properties would also be changed.

Mildred Dresselhaus

I would say the first three or four papers on nano-thermoelectricity in bismuth went almost unnoticed, but all of a sudden when Dirac cones came along - pop! - there was huge interest in bismuth-related materials.

Mildred Dresselhaus

Commercial thermoelectrics are a reality. The automobile industry is now working with conventional thermoelectric materials. They are interested a little bit in nanostructuring because under some conditions, the nanostructures work.

Mildred Dresselhaus

If you don't have material, you don't have an experiment.

Mildred Dresselhaus

We're all concerned about sustainable energy. If we could recycle waste heat to generate energy, we could use it for something useful.

Mildred Dresselhaus

If we had improved materials that could be produced cheaply and in large quantities, certainly the thermoelectrics industry could move forward more quickly.

Mildred Dresselhaus

I behaved the way I was taught to behave: like a woman in the company of men. If you behaved aggressively in the company of men, they wouldn't accept you.

Mildred Dresselhaus

Institutions are increasingly persuaded that political maneuvering is more important than scientific justification in securing federal funds.

Mildred Dresselhaus

The main thread of my work is structure property relations and materials. If you have certain atoms, why do they attract each other? Why do they make compounds? Why do they do what they do?

Mildred Dresselhaus

If I were not able anymore to come to the lab, that's retirement. Or if I had no more ideas of things. Every year, there's something new that comes along that's too exciting to quit.

Mildred Dresselhaus

I learned to read music before I learned to read script.

Mildred Dresselhaus

The best thing about having a lady professor on campus is that it tells women students that they can do it, too.

Mildred Dresselhaus

People in academia and industry are not accustomed to people who have long lapses in their careers.

Mildred Dresselhaus