Winner of 2017 Franklin Institute award dies

Mildred Dresselhaus, a pioneering physicist known for her work with graphene and nanomaterials, has died at age 86.

The "queen of carbon science" received numerous honors for her work, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Last fall, she was announced as one of the 2017 winners of the Franklin Institute medals, which are to be given in May in Philadelphia.

In addition to winning acclaim for her research, Dresselhaus was a prominent advocate for mentoring young women in the sciences.

A professor emerita at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she died Monday at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass., the university said.

In recent years, she continued to publish scientific papers on such topics as two-dimensional sheets of electronic materials, and she helped to plan a new 200,000-square-foot nanoscience center that is slated to open at M.I.T. in 2018.