2020 FELLOWS

Millicent (Mimi) E. Goldschmidt

University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

For distinguished scholarship, service to science and society, and for paving the road for women in STEM

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"I joined Sigma Xi as a student at Purdue in 1949 and am still an active board member of our local chapter. It has been very special for me to serve on board and committees at the national and local levels. Sigma Xi has enhanced my life by understanding broad areas of science. It has made me a better scientist and as a person."

Biography

Millicent (Mimi) Goldschmidt is professor emerita in the Department of Diagnostic and Biomedical Sciences in the School of Dentistry at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. She is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. She enjoyed research and teaching during her career, has been invited to speak around the world, and has aimed to be a mentor, primarily to women. She has provided money for postdoctoral and graduate women to visit laboratories and established a Grant in Aid of Research at Sigma Xi for any woman in microbiology needing a small sum for research projects. She is also involved at Purdue University with freshman women interested in science.

Her master’s degree thesis at Purdue University on penicillin production introduced the addition of unsaturated fatty acids to the growth medium. This greatly enhanced production of the antibiotic and thus changed the way it was produced commercially.

Another project involved NASA. Baylor University Medical School asked her to spend time at NASA. She became the director of the Protocol to Plan the Lunar Receiving Laboratory and to plan the biology tasks using the first moon rocks to detect any pathology on life forms. Her team also planned the tests on the returned and quarantined astronauts. She was offered a position at NASA, but it was too far away from her husband and children and she returned to Houston.

The Apollo project at NASA made Goldschmidt recognize the lack of rapid diagnostic tests in microbiology. She therefore decided to concentrate on rapid methods of instrumentation and detection of microorganisms and has published extensively in that area.

She also worked part time at various laboratories at Fort Detrick in Maryland to investigate the effect of shock waves on bacteria.

She ended her career teaching dental, medical, and graduate students at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. She found, among other things, that chlorophylls plus light would kill the bacteria that caused dental caries.

“I have been a survivor when it wasn’t very popular to be a woman, a scientist, and a mother,” she said. “Purdue was very upset when I married a fellow graduate student (Eugene) and even more upset when I became pregnant. ‘We are training housewives, not scientists and shouldn’t have women students at all.’ When Purdue’s Department of Biological Sciences honored me in 2007 by naming me one of their first Outstanding Alumni, I took along my daughter (a lawyer) and son (PhD in computer intelligence and brain function). There have always been lower pay and promotion along the way. This is improving somewhat for women but still has a way to go for equality in rank and salary."

Sigma Xi has a complete CV that lists awards and publications that is available upon request to executiveoffice@sigmaxi.org.

2020 FELLOWS

Millicent (Mimi) E. Goldschmidt

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