Katharine Burr Blodgett, American Inventor
Blodgett demonstrating equipment in lab, 1938. Katharine Burr Blodgett (January 10, 1898 - October 12, 1979) was an American physicist and inventor. She was hired by General Electric as a research scientist as soon as she had received her Master's degree in 1920. She was the first woman to work as a scientist for General Electric Laboratory. She was awarded a position in a physics program at Ernest Rutherford's Cavendish Laboratory and was the first woman to earn a in physics from Cambridge University, in 1926. She worked with Irving Langmuir on monomolecular coatings designed to cover surfaces of water, metal, or glass. These special coatings were oily and could be deposited in layers only a few nanometers thick. In 1938, she devised a method to spread these monomolecular coatings one at a time onto glass or metal. The coating is called the Langmuir-Blodgett film. One such use for her glass was in the stunning cinematography of the popular film, Gone with the Wind (1939). She also invented the color gauge, a method to measure the molecular coatings on the glass to one millionth of an inch, poison gas adsorbents, methods for deicing aircraft wings, and improving smokescreens. She was issued eight US patents during her career, and was also an avid amateur astronomer. She collected antiques, played bridge with friends and wrote funny poems in her spare time. She died in her home in 1979 at the age of 81.
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