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.

Sexism, infighting and Telkes’s own prickly personality also made it nearly impossible for her to gain support for a process she invented that allowed chemical storage of solar energy. And although her accomplishments were touted in the news media, the public often seemed more interested in her looks than her innovations.

But Telkes was wily, brilliant and committed.

The film tracks her work on the 1948 Dover Sun House, a solar-heated model home created by an all-female team. Now hailed as a groundbreaking, clean-energy prototype noteworthy for its ultramodern design and Telkes’s use of chemical salts that absorbed and released heat, it gained national prominence. But the experiment failed after a few years, and the home’s fame — and Telkes’s — didn’t sit well with her male colleagues.

The documentary skillfully juggles Telkes’s science and sex, but the portrait it paints is ultimately one that cannot be constrained by gender. If she had been able to reach her true potential, it suggests — and if the United States hadn’t been so committed to energy powered by fossil fuels — the world might have even more advanced solar technologies today.

Viewers can judge for themselves and learn more about a formidable scientific mind.

“The Sun Queen” airs on American Experience on PBS channels on Tuesday, with simultaneous streaming at PBS.org.