Mechtilde Dashwood shared an educational history with her older sister, Eleanor Dashwood, attending MIT for each of her degrees, although she chose to study theoretical astrophysics. A pioneer in string theory and the unification of quantum mechanics and relativity, Mechtilde was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012.

In addition to a comprehensive set of professional and personal correspondence and writing, Mechtilde Dashwood’s papers contain hundreds of terabytes of raw data in digital form, the product of (ulitmately successful) attempts to test her theoretical insights.