people · updated 2026-08-11
Maria Telkes
confidence: high volatility: cold verified: 2026-08-11fresh
Hungarian-American biophysicist and solar energy pioneer (1900-1995) who developed the Dover Sun House's Glauber's salt heat storage system, a WWII portable solar desalinator, and the first solar-electric house. Known as 'The Sun Queen.'
Maria Telkes (December 12, 1900, Budapest — December 2, 1995, Budapest) was a Hungarian-American biophysicist and solar energy researcher who earned the nickname “The Sun Queen” over a career spanning six decades and producing more than 100 papers and 20 patents.
Early career
Telkes earned her PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Budapest in 1924 and emigrated to the United States the same year. She worked as a biophysicist at the Cleveland Clinic, then at Westinghouse, before joining the MIT Solar Energy Conversion Project in 1939, where she remained until 1953.
Major projects
During World War II, Telkes developed a portable solar desalinator for downed aviators, a device that saved lives in the Pacific theater by converting seawater to drinking water using only sunlight.
Her most ambitious project was the Dover Sun House (1948), designed with architect Eleanor Raymond and funded by philanthropist Amelia Peabody. The house stored solar heat in 21 tons of Glauber’s salt (sodium sulfate decahydrate), a phase-change material Telkes championed. The system worked for two winters but failed by the third, feeding the rivalry between Telkes and MIT colleague Hoyt Hottel, who favored water as a storage medium. Hottel influenced a review that led to Telkes being dismissed from MIT in 1953.
Telkes continued her work elsewhere. At New York University she developed solar ovens for use in developing countries. At the University of Delaware she was the principal researcher on Solar One (1971-73), the first house designed to generate both heat and electricity from solar energy.
Legacy
Telkes received the first Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award in 1952. She was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2012 and honored with a Google Doodle in 2022. Peter Van Dresser drew on her work for his c. 1956 Santa Fe solar adobe house, connecting her research to the New Mexico passive solar tradition.
See also
- Dover Sun House
- Eleanor Raymond
- Hoyt Hottel
- Peter Van Dresser
- Dover Sun House — the 1948 house built around her Glauber’s salt heat-storage system
- Amelia Peabody — the philanthropist who funded the Dover Sun House