Born: 10 January 1898, United States
Died: 12 October 1979
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
American physicist and chemist Dr Katharine Burr Blodgett is known for her work on surface chemistry, including inventing “invisible” or nonreflective glass. In 1926, she became the first woman awarded a PhD in physics from the University of Cambridge.
While studying at Bryn Mawr on scholarship, Blodgett was inspired by her professors, including mathematician Charlotte Angas Scott and physicist James Barnes. In 1917, the future Nobel winner Irving Langmuir, a former colleague of her father, took Blodgett on a tour of General Electric (GE)’s research laboratories and offered her a research position if she pursued further education first. After completing her Bachelor’s, she enrolled at the University of Chicago, studying gas absorption for her Master’s degree. After completing her Master’s in 1918, she began working with Langmuir as a research scientist for six years – the first woman to work for the GE lab in Schenectady, NY – before deciding to pursue her PhD. Langmuir helped convince the reluctant administrators at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory to admit her, enabling her to become the first woman to receive a PhD in physics from the university. She then returned to GE.
Much of Blodgett’s work was in collaboration with Langmuir, who had developed a technique to create single-molecule thin films. The two worked together to expand on this, creating monomolecular coatings only a few nanmeters thick to cover surfaces including water, metal and glass. In 1935, Blodgett devised a method to spread the coatings one layer at a time on glass or metal, and was able to stack them with molecular precision with a device now known as the Langmuir–Blodgett trough.
By doing so, she was able to create “invisible,” nonreflective glass made of 44 layers of the material, now called Langmuir–Blodgett film. Among its many uses are cinema projectors and cameras – it was used to film Gone with the Wind, a movie known for its crystal-clear cinematography – as well as submarine periscopes and airplane spy cameras during World War II. Blodgett was issued eight patents during her career, inventing poison gas adsorbents, the color gauge, methods to deice aircraft wings, and improved smokescreens. Blodgett and Langmuir also collaborated on improving the light bulb and their studies of electrical discharges in gases helped lay the foundations for plasma physics.