Katharine Blodgett

Today is the birthday of Katharine Blodgett, who was born in 1898 in Schenectady, New York. As a high-school student Blodgett visited General Electric’s research lab in Schenectady and met future Nobel laureate Irving Langmuir, who advised her on pursuing a research career. Blodgett attended the University of Chicago and then earned a doctorate at the University of Cambridge under Ernest Rutherford . She was the first woman to receive a physics PhD at Cambridge. At GE, where she spent the rest of her career, she made several discoveries in surface science, including nanoscale films that boosted the transmittance of glass to 99%. Her name is perhaps most familiar to scientists today via the term Langmuir–Blodgett film, which describes a technique for creating monolayers of organic molecules. Blodgett received the Francis Garvan Medal from the American Chemical Society and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Date in History: 10 January 1898