Katharine Burr Blodgett

• Born: January 10, 1898
• Birthplace: Schenectady, New York
• Died: October 12, 1979
• Place of death: Schenectady, New York

American physicist and chemist

Working with thin films of fatty acids deposited on glass, Blodgett was able to build up more than two hundred successive layers. In a series of studies, she developed important applications for these films.

Primary fields: Chemistry; physics

Primary inventions: Langmuir-Blodgett films; nonreflecting glass

Early Life

Katharine Burr Blodgett was born in Schenectady, New York, on January 10, 1898. Her attorney father, George Bedington Blodgett, was head of the patent department at the world-class research laboratories of the General Electric Company (GE). Since Mr. Blodgett had died a few weeks before Katharine’s birth, she was raised by her mother, Katharine Buchanan Blodgett, née Burr. The family, including her older brother, moved to New York City and later to Europe, where the children became bilingual and were exposed to French culture. The Blodgetts returned to New York briefly, and Katharine studied for a short time at an American school in Saranac Lake. Following further European travels, chiefly in Germany, Katharine completed her early education at the Rayson School in New York City.

At the age of eighteen, Blodgett earned a scholarship to Bryn Mawr College. She excelled in physics under James Barnes and mathematics under Charlotte Agnes Scott. In interviews later in life, Blodgett recognized these two teachers as making important contributions to the atmosphere that challenged her mind. In 1917, she received her bachelor’s degree and went to the University of Chicago, where she studied the adsorption of gases on charcoal. After World War I, this work was published jointly with her mentor Harvey B. Lemon.

Prior to her studies at Chicago, Blodgett visited the General Electric laboratories at Schenectady and was guided around byIrving Langmuir, her father’s colleague and the future Nobel laureate in chemistry. He recognized her talent and perhaps suggested that she might become his assistant after acquiring more scientific background. After completing her master’s degree at Chicago, she joined Langmuir as the first female scientist at GE. There followed six years of productive collaboration.

Langmuir appreciated what a talented associate he had found in Blodgett, and she realized that her career would be severely limited without a doctorate. With his help, she was accepted at Cambridge University in the laboratory of Sir Ernest Rutherford (Nobel laureate in chemistry, 1908). The essential new knowledge contained in her thesis appeared under her own name in the Philosophical Magazine in 1926. These studies dealt with the flow of electrons in mercury vapor. In the same year, she became the first woman to be awarded a doctoral degree in physics by Cambridge University.

Life’s Work

When Dr. Blodgett returned to Schenectady, Langmuir, her mentor-collaborator, had begun a series of studies that were to win him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932. The work concerned the behavior of thin films involving a single molecule in thickness. His studies of the forces of adsorption led to a great improvement in the understanding of the molecular attractions between the phases. For the next six years, she would collaborate with Langmuir, and together they published a series of significant articles in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) and the Physical Review. Some of these early studies dealt with gases and the properties of tungsten and are clearly related to Langmuir’s general interests and his efforts to improve the efficiency of electric light bulbs. In addition to their joint publications in scientific journals, they successfully applied for several patents.

In 1933, when Langmuir returned from Sweden after receiving the Nobel Prize, he asked Blodgett to begin working with him on the behavior of thin films; especially those having a thickness of a single molecule. They were able to develop techniques for the study of solids, liquids, and gases. In time, their work even included the large and complicated proteins. In 1935, they published a paper dealing with “new methods for research with monomolecular films” in the German journal Kolloid-Zeitschrift. In 1937, an article appeared in Physical Review.

Langmuir had never treated Blodgett as an assistant, and she rewarded his confidence with a scientific life of her own. While making significant contributions to their joint research, she was also striking out on her own. In 1934, she published a work under her own name in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Its title, “Monomolecular Films of Fatty Acids on Glass,” foreshadowed much of her future scientific career. In the same year, she reported on interference colors in oil films on water in the Journal of the Optical Society of America. In 1935, the same year as her joint study with Langmuir, she returned to the JACS with a very long article (sixteen pages) describing her technique in great detail.

For twenty years, until her retirement in 1963, Blodgett continued to perfect her techniques and to devise practical applications for them. Her most celebrated accomplishment was the discovery in 1938 of a nearly nonreflecting glass. An avalanche of popular articles appeared reporting on the woman who invented “invisible glass.” It is instructive to observe just how close the competition is in exciting areas of science: Just two days after Blodgett’s publication, two physicists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced that they had produced nonreflecting glass by a completely different process. While neither the GE nor the MIT product was stable enough for most practical applications, it was a short time before others solved the problem by building on Blodgett’s insights. Today, people take for granted the presence of nonreflecting glass in all kinds of optical instruments as well as windshields, picture frames, and eyeglasses.

In World War II, GE contributed to the war effort, and Blodgett worked with Langmuir to develop an improved generator for military smoke screens. The apparatus was a great success and undoubtedly saved many lives in the invasions during the war. Blodgett was among the earliest users of a huge analog computer built by GE. Her calculation of the trajectories of cloud droplets was important in dealing with the critical problem of icing on aircraft wings.

A number of schools awarded Blodgett honorary degrees, including Elmira College and Brown University. The American Association of University Women presented her with its Annual Achievement Award in 1945. In 1951, she received the Garvan Medal from the American Chemical Society. She died in her Schenectady home when she was eighty-one.

Impact

The most striking characteristic of Blodgett’s career must be her absolute dedication to science. Rather than seeking professional acclaim and financial advantage, she spent her entire life probing nature’s secrets. As the protégé, and later colleague, of an internationally celebrated scientist, she displayed an independence that was remarkable for her time and is still rare. As a scientist, her career exemplifies discipline, and she truly inspired those with whom she worked. Her ability to turn the highest quality research in pure science into practical products is admirable. Equally remarkable is the rapidity with which her devices became tools that opened exciting new opportunities in pure science.

A little-noticed aspect of Blodgett’s contribution is found in her practical work during both world wars. In the waning years of “the war to end wars,” her research for her master’s degree centered on the adsorption of gases on charcoal. These studies, which sought to lessen the terror of chemical warfare, were not published until after the war. In the 1940’s, Blodgett worked with Langmuir on developing a highly successful smoke generator that served in the invasions of Africa, Sicily, and Normandy. In those same years, she worked on the problems associated with deicing the wings of aircraft.

Bibliography

Davis, Kathleen A. “Katharine Blodgett and Thin Films.” Journal of Chemical Education 61 (1984): 437-439. Certainly the best treatment of Blodgett’s life and work, with emphasis on scientific aspects. Excellent drawings of her apparatus and of the relationship of molecules in thin films. Some technical detail, but understandable to the high school chemistry student.

Finley, K. Thomas, and Patricia J. Siegel. “Katharine Burr Blodgett (1898-1979).” In Women in Chemistry and Physics. A Biobibliographic Sourcebook, edited by Louise S. Grinstein, Rose K. Rose, and Miriam H. Rafailovich. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993. A somewhat longer than usual biographical sketch that treats her life and scientific career in equal depth. A fairly detailed list of her scientific publications and the numerous articles about her and the public’s reaction to her discoveries.

Jacoby, Mitch. “Just Surface Deep, But Not Shallow.” Chemical and Engineering News 81 (2003): 37. In celebrating the 125th year of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, brief articles describing the most often cited articles published in this distinguished journal were presented. A photograph of Blodgett in her laboratory is accompanied by an excellent description of her work and its importance. Her professional relationship with Irving Langmuir is described.

Rudavsky, Shari. “Katharine Burr Blodgett: 1898-1979.” In Notable Twentieth-Century Scientists, edited by Emily J. McMurray. New York: Gale Research, 1995. A brief biographical sketch with a photograph and a short list of writings by and about Blodgett.

Schaefer, Vincent J., and George L. Gaines, Jr. “Obituary: Katharine Burr Blodgett, 1898-1979.” Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 76 (1980): 269-271. This brief article provides important insight to her work, life, and personality only possible from authors who were her colleagues. Schaefer worked closely with Blodgett.

Wise, George. “Blodgett, Katharine Burr.” In American National Biography, edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. The most up-to-date brief biography. Well written and covering all aspects of her life and work. Annotated biographical notes.