While at UC-Berkeley, he was involved in work that has become, according to Levitov, “a cornerstone of semiconductor physics, the first successful measurement of cyclotron resonance of charge carriers in solids. Dresselhaus studied physics as both an undergraduate and graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, under condensed-matter physicist Charles Kittel. The significance of these effects, discovered long ago, has grown tremendously in recent years.”īorn November 9, 1929, in the Panama Canal Zone, Gene F. These effects underpin dissipationless spin transport and other beautiful spin-electric phenomena. The Dresselhaus effect, derived directly from the group theory and symmetry considerations, resonates strongly with current interests in the Dirac and Weyl points, and their relation to symmetry and topology of bands in solids. Spin is anchored to electron momentum in predictably different ways governed by crystal symmetry, enabling a plethora of schemes to manipulate and control spins. From this work it became evident that the `spin’ degree-of-freedom in a solid is far more than just spin rather, it describes spin and carrier velocity intertwined in an inseparable manner. Gene Dresselhaus’s death was closely followed by the public announcement that, jointly with Emmanuel Rashba, he had been awarded the 2022 American Physical Society Oliver E Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize - considered the most prestigious award granted within the field of condensed-matter physics - for “pioneering research on spin-orbit coupling in crystals, particularly the foundational discovery of chiral spin-orbit interactions, which continue to enable new developments in spin transport and topological materials.” In a coincidence befitting their long and loving partnership, the Buckley award’s past winners include Millie Dresselhaus, who received the prize in 2008.Īs Levitov explains, “His early theoretical work showed how the spin-orbit interaction in zinc blende lattice can lead to spin-orbital interaction in the Bloch Hamiltonian. And his contributions to the (Mildred) Dresselhaus research group within the departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and of Physics influenced a generation of scientists and engineers focused on the inner workings of materials. His lifelong encouragement and support of Millie was a key contributor to her success at a time when women were often discouraged from pursuing research in science and engineering.
“Gene Dresselhaus was a brilliant scientist who will be remembered for his pioneering ideas that shaped modern band theory,” says Leonid Levitov, professor of physics at MIT, adding that his work was “central to current efforts to create hardware for quantum computers by exploiting electrical control of spin qubits, and also guided the recent breakthroughs in the emerging areas of quantum spin-Hall effect and topological materials.”ĭresselhaus was also a close research collaborator of his beloved wife, the late MIT Institute Professor Mildred “Millie” Dresselhaus, who died in 2017.
He is the namesake of the Dresselhaus effect, a phenomenon in which spin can affect the energies of electrons within a material. He was an early pioneer behind the physics of what is now known as spintronics, a field concerned with a property of electrons called spin. He was 91.ĭresselhaus was a theoretical solid-state physicist whose work focused on the science of materials. Gene Dresselhaus, a longtime research physicist at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and later the Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory at MIT (now part of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center), died peacefully at his home in California on Sept.
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