The Hungarian American biophysicist is considered the founding mother of solar power. But despite devoting her life to solar technology, her contributions are largely forgotten today.
The documentary offers a fascinating, if infuriating, view of Telkes’s life and career, from her origins in Hungary to her groundbreaking work developing ways to harness the sun’s power. It shows her path from research scientist at Westinghouse, then at MIT and elsewhere — a path that, as a woman in science in mid-20th-century America, was anything but straightforward.
The pitfalls were many. As a civilian in the Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II, she invented a way to use the sun’s rays to desalinate water. But although the invention would have been critical to soldiers during World War II, manufacturing issues and office politics stymied the project.
Now you have these transgenders taking away all the credit these women deserve.