THE SUN QUEEN Maria Telkes

Her pioneering work on solar heat and solar energy would change science forever – but it was her passionate dedication to humanity that made her a true visionary.

Meet the remarkable Maria Telkes, subject of the amazing American Experience documentary The Sun Queen with Olivia’s guests, Writer/Producer Gene Tempest and Director Amanda Pollack.

You can watch The Sun Queen from The American Experience here, or you can find the trailer here.

You can read more about the relationship between Maria Telkes and MIT engineer Hoyt Hottel in this fantastic essay, and in 2019 Andrew Nemethy wrote a fascinating article about his experience growing up in the Dover Sun House.

Diagram for a simple solar distilling system intended for use on lifeboats at sea, using refracted sunlight to evaporate seawater, then collect the resulting fresh water for drinking. — Diagram for Telkes’ solar still, which produces fresh water from seawater. It eventually became standard equipment on every US Navy lifeboat, and was even “upscaled” to provide fresh drinking water for the Virgin Islands.
Image: Library of Congress

Workers installing early version of "solar panels" on the strongly slanted roof of a small white "cottage-like" building. — MIT 1, the first (failed) solar heating experiment using Glauber’s Salts.
Image: MIT Museum

A long rectangular two-story building with a sharply slanted roof and a frontage that is almost entirely windows. — The Dover Sun House in 1948. The house was finally demolished around 2010.
image: Frances Loeb Library, Harvard Graduate School of Design

A family of three stands in front of a modernist-styled home with a second floor that is entirely glass. A young child is looking at the camera and petting a black and white cat which sits on a picnic table next to him. A man and woman stand behind the boy, wearing long coats and looking down smilingly at the cat. — The Nemethy Family in front of their home, the Dover Sun House.

Maria Telkes, a glamorous-looking woman in a long belted wool dress, stands in front of a futuristic-looking metal structure with a reflector/sun catcher above a small metal "box." She is speaking with two men who seem to be examining the device, while another man stands in the background eating a hamburger (presumably cooked with the solar oven). — Telkes demonstrating her solar oven. Designed in 1953, it is still used today in refugee camps and all across the developing world.
Image: Cosmos Magazine

An older woman wearing a lab coat and holding a large beaker/vial of some chemical substance sits in front of a complicated-looking scientific instrument on the table. She is obviously speaking to the camera and about to demonstrate some sort of scientific process using the machine. — Maria Telkes demonstrating Glauber’s Salt technology at MIT.
Image: Library of Congress

A long rectangular house with solar panels on a sharply-sloped roof but a fairly "normal looking" frontage sits in a nicely landscaped yard. — Solar One, the first house in the US to produce both heat and electricity by solar. Designed by Telkes and others at the University of Delaware in 1971, it launched the solar revolution.
Image: University of Delaware

An extravagantly complex white crystalline structure, somewhat resembling natural quartz, but much more "dramatic" looking. — Glauber’s Salt, aka Mirabilite.
Image by 用户账户

A cover of Popular Science Magazine in 1949 reads "Sun Furnace in Your Attic. The illustration shows sun beams steaming in through a top story of windows to a "sun furnace" shown as a fiery blast projecting heat downwards into a very "mid-century modern" family home. — Magazines trumpeted the power of solar from the 1920s through the 1970s.

Diagram from a magazine explaining the inner workings of the Dover Sun House (aka “Telkes House).

A white man with close-cropped graying dark hair, wearing a charcoal gray suit, white shirt, and striped tie, smiles at the camera. This appears to be a "faculty portrait" type of image. — Hoyt Hottel, head of the MIT Solar Fund and Telkes’ “chief nemesis.”
image: MIT Special Collections

Pioneering architect Eleanor Raymond, who designed the Dover Sun House.
image: Frances Loeb Library, Harvard Graduate School of Design

A young woman in a demure but fashionable long buttoned-up wool coat and turn of the century style "picture hat" smiles calmly at the camera. Her dark hair is done up in a "gibson girl" style. — Amelia Peabody, philanthropist, sculptor, and funder of the Dover Sun House.
image: Amelia Peabody Charitable Fund

Two women in long coats examine a large blueprint as they stand in front of the Dover Sun House - a long rectangular two-story building with a sharply slanted roof and a frontage that is almost entirely windows. — Maria Telkes and Eleanor Raymond in front of the Dover Sun House.
image: Frances Loeb Library, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Three women sit in black leather chairs on a stage in front of a large backdrop reading "The Sun Queen." Amanda Pollack (right) is speaking animatedly while Cameo George (left) and Olivia Meikle (center) listen, smiling. — “The Sun Queen” Executive Producer Cameo George, Olivia Meikle, and Director Amanda Pollack onstage at the 2023 TCA Press Tour.

Watch The Sun Queen on the American Experience, Tuesday, April 4th on PBS at 9pm/8 central. — Watch The Sun Queen on the American Experience, Tuesday, April 4th on PBS or online.

Amanda Pollak has been directing and producing highly acclaimed documentaries for over two decades, including over a dozen films for the national PBS series, American Experience. She produced and co-directed The Great War, an epic six-hour series on America’s role in World War 1, which was seen by more than 10 million people nationwide. She produced Into the Grand Canyon, an environmental adventure story that premiered on National Geographic and is now streaming worldwide on Disney+, and executive produced Ailey, an immersive portrait of the renowned choreographer, which premiered at Sundance, was released theatrically by NEON, and broadcast on PBS’s American Masters. Pollak was part of the founding team for Retro Report, an online series of investigative pieces featured on the front page of The New York Times digital edition. Her work has been recognized with three Emmy Awards, a Cine Golden Eagle Award, and the George Foster Peabody Award.

Gene Tempest is an award-winning American filmmaker and historian. Her work has appeared in The Boston Globe and The New York Times, and her screenwriting has been recognized by the Writers Guild of America. A coeditor of Une Histoire De La Guerre (2018) and a former contributor to the French magazine L’histoire, her projects include the PBS documentaries The Great War (coproducer; 2017), American Veteran (cowriter; 2021), Citizen Hearst (writer/producer; 2021), and Sun Queen (writer/producer; 2023). She received her BA from the University of California at Berkeley, and her PhD from Yale University, where she won the Hans Gatzke Prize for her work in military history. She has taught at SUNY Cortland and Boston University, and from 2016-2017 served as the first ever Historian in Residence for American Experience at WGBH-Boston, where she helped fund and develop new history programming for public television.

Music featured in this episode includes:

Debussy’s “Nocturnes” by Amanda Setlik Wilson
“Shadoma” by The Mini Vandals
“Clair de Lune” by Brent Hugh
“Piano Journey” and “Requiem” by Esther Abrami
“The Shadow Self” by I Think I Can Help You
“Looping Ascent” by Joel Cummins

Music featured in this episode includes:

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