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The only female successful a laboratory filled pinch men, Katharine Burr Blodgett soon becomes indispensable arsenic an adjunct to nan General Electric Company’s astir celebrated scientist, Irving Langmuir. Their moving narration is an elegant symbiosis. Her forte is experimentation; his is technological theory. We travel their business arsenic they successfully find ways to build a amended lightbulb, but Langmuir stumbles pinch an off-the-wall mentation of matter. All nan while, Blodgett builds her life successful Schenectady, N.Y.: she goes to church, makes caller friends and falls successful love. In 1924 she embarks connected a caller travel to nan University of Cambridge, wherever she studies pinch immoderate of nan astir salient physicists of nan 20th century.
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Katie Hafner: I'm Katie Hafner, and this is Lost Women of Science.
Today, connected Layers of Brilliance, Katharine Burr Blodgett, Irving Langmuir, and nan yin and yang of their technological collaboration.
Katharine is an anomaly successful Schenectady. A superb female intelligence wherever nan norms for what was expected of a female astatine nan clip fought pinch who she was and what she did. At work, it's wall-to-wall men, wherever a female enters a room–– a female who isn't a secretary, but an existent peer––and that lands pinch a small, audible vibe shift. Katharine becomes indispensable to nan activity she and Irving Langmuir are doing together, yielding miraculous science, though her domiciled is simply a supporting 1 to a awesome man, which is each portion of nan tapestry of life successful nan early portion of nan 20th century. Any different measurement of looking astatine it would defy logic.
And extracurricular of nan laboratory she joins nan societal life swirling astir her––as immoderate female successful her twenties might––bringing fulfillment but besides heavy disappointment.
When Irving Langmuir returned from his warfare activity successful 1918, he didn't miss a beat. From what we tin show from his laboratory notes astatine nan time, he picked up correct wherever he had near off, pinch his lightbulb work. And now, he had nan talented Miss Blodgett to help.
Museum clip: Hi. Good morning. Hi. Yes. Thank you truthful much. You're invited for doing this. How did I cognize that they were nan podcasters? I don't cognize what could perchance person fixed america away.
Katie Hafner: When Producer Sophia Levin and I were successful Schenectady past summer, we went downtown to sojourn nan repository of millions of archival items from nan General Electric Company.
Chris Hunter: I americium Chris Hunter and I'm nan curator and president of MiSci, nan Museum of Innovation and Science.
Katie Hafner: As Chris Hunter starts to show america around, we travel upon a floor-to-ceiling blow-up of a photograph taken successful 1950.
We cognize this photograph. We saw it for nan first clip months earlier successful overmuch smaller shape and we recovered it to beryllium specified a compelling and vivid illustration of Katharine Blodgett's beingness arsenic nan lone female that we turned it into our main creation for nan season.
In nan photograph, astir 20 GE scientists are posed opinionated successful their agency doorways.
Chris Hunter: Katharine is 4th successful from nan left.
Katie Hafner: Chris really didn't person to constituent that retired because Katharine is nan only female successful nan shot. She’s sewage that awesome activity successful her hairsbreadth that she went to nan hairdresser for connected a regular basis.
And astatine conscionable 5 ft 2 inches, she is dwarfed by nan men successful nan photo.
I mean, he can't beryllium a giant, his feline adjacent to her, but she really is diminutive. Where's Langmuir?
Chris Hunter: Langmuir is not successful nan picture. I don't cognize why. He might've forgotten it was image day.
Katie Hafner: This larger-than-life practice of 1 female surrounded by men successful suits is simply a beautiful sobering image. But, Chris is speedy to activity disconnected nan preconceived conception we've carried pinch america each nan measurement to nan beforehand doorway of nan Museum of Innovation and Science successful Schenectady, aliases MiSci, which is that Katharine Blodgett was nan first female investigation intelligence astatine GE.
Chris Hunter: Oh yeah. She was decidedly 1 of nan first, but Katharine wasn't really nan first.
Katie Hafner: Two different female scientists preceded Katharine. The first was Edna May Best, a chemist who joined nan laboratory successful 1902, only to time off 2 years later.
Chris Hunter: As was customary astatine that time, erstwhile she sewage married, she near nan company.
Katie Hafner: And location was Mary Andrews, different talented chemist who joined nan GE laboratory successful 1906, and her communicative is simply a small much complicated.
Chris Hunter: Mary Andrews, started there, sewage married, moved away, and past her, past her hubby died and past she came backmost up to Schenectady and resumed her occupation astatine nan investigation lab.
Katie Hafner: Mary Andrews did lightbulb activity excessively and worked astatine GE, pinch immoderate periods of absence, until soon earlier her decease successful 1934. But among nan women who were investigation scientists, Katharine stayed nan longest and did, arguably, nan astir important work.
I show Chris we're still connected nan hunt for Katharine’s laboratory notebooks, and he says they decidedly aren’t astatine MiSci but hopes they’ll move up and beryllium made accessible to nan public. Where nan notebooks mightiness person ended up, he adds, is anybody's guess.
Chris Hunter: The notebooks were mostly institution property, but occasionally immoderate of them did get retired into nan wild. I can't really 100% opportunity her notebooks don't exist.
Katie Hafner: Oh, you can't?
Chris Hunter: No, no. There's a chance that GE still mightiness person them.
Katie Hafner: So it's not all, each is not lost. We will return each of this nether advisement.
In nan meantime, let’s attraction connected Irving’s laboratory notebooks. Miss Blodgett makes what appears to beryllium her debut quality connected November 19, 1918. Not a peculiarly melodramatic debut. Langmuir conscionable makes a speedy mention that Katharine had shared immoderate information pinch him. But Katharine was astir to go a regular fixture successful nan Langmuir logs.
By then, Langmuir had already revolutionized nan electrical lightbulb.
At nan Library of Congress, we recovered galore letters Irving wrote to his mother, respective mentioning his lightbulb work. And I had my stepson, Benjy––our voiceover man for nan season––read a bunch of them.
Benjy Wachter arsenic Irving Langmuir: Dear Mother, I person spent nan past 2 weeks successful nan laboratory successful constructing servants of nan state which will lead to very important results, which I shall expect to beryllium amended than thing yet made.
Katie Hafner: There were truthful galore boastful lightbulb letters we sewage a small giddy.
Benjy Wachter: These lamps will beryllium nan top lamps.
Katie Hafner: The likes of which…
Benjy Wachter: No one's ever seen lamps for illustration these. Edison. Edison was a loser. You're gonna hide each the, you're gonna hide nan sanction Edison.
Katie Hafner: Yet by nan clip Katharine arrived successful 1918, Irving mightiness person been saying to himself, there's sewage to beryllium much to life than, literally, building a amended lightbulb.
So erstwhile Irving’s done pinch his warfare work, he turns nan incandescent lamp laboratory into a general-purpose installation to an full slew of basal investigation projects. For example, erstwhile he was processing cool caller lightbulbs––well, cooler than what came before––Langmuir had go an master connected tungsten filaments: perfecting methods for measuring their temperature, resistance, and aboveground area. Now, he was making caller usage of each his tungs-pertise, shifting his attraction from ray emanation to catalyzing chemic reactions.
And moving these experiments? Katharine Blodgett, aliases “Katie,” arsenic she became known to immoderate of her colleagues. Though we for illustration Katharine, because it has an aerial of greater respect. Langmuir, connected nan different hand, likes to telephone her Miss Blodgett, astatine slightest successful his laboratory notebooks. In that early notebook from 1918, Miss Blodgett’s sanction crops up constantly. Langmuir is asking her to combine and run their laboratory because, dissimilar her, he was not a talented experimenter.
At Irving’s request, Katharine began to analyse nan decomposition of ammonia state arsenic it passed complete a heated tungsten wire, a guidance that was important for definite business processes.
She installs and refines instrumentation, specified arsenic travel gauges, to measurement really overmuch state is moving done nan system. She identifies erstwhile state isn’t flowing astatine a steady, predictable pace. She produces tables search really quickly reactions occur. And she distinguishes betwixt existent patterns and experimental artifacts.
She is simply a partner successful some computation and analysis. She calculates values. She compares runs. She helps construe earthy measurements into usable complaint laws—equations that bespeak existent laboratory behavior—showing really a reaction’s velocity changes depending connected really overmuch ammonia passes complete nan filament. And, she speaks up. She pushes for purer ammonia, because impurities are wrecking nan things she’s responsible for measuring.
Irving theorized relentlessly, but his theories collapsed without Katharine’s ability, time aft day, to make nan servants of nan state behave.
But if you person successful mind a female toiling successful nan shadows, cognize that Irving did admit her contributions, and publically too. In July 1919, not moreover a twelvemonth aft nan 2 started moving together, Irving presented a insubstantial to nan Faraday Society connected immoderate of their work. And though nan writer is Irving alone, astatine nan very end, he acknowledges her, which he didn't really person to do. He writes that he is “much indebted to Miss Katharine Blodgett, who did astir of nan experimental work.”
Most.
Maybe coming she would person gotten an writer in installments too, but for 1919, fixed nan experimental designs were each Irving's, this mini statement is simply a large deal.
So what we’re seeing here, astatine nan very commencement of their partnership, was not mentorship alone; it was co-production of knowledge, wrong an business investigation laboratory astatine a clip erstwhile specified labs were still inventing themselves.
It was an elegant symbiosis. But Langmuir, ever nan theorist, was restless. He wanted to make a mark. And a important one.
Enter nan atom.
In nan nineteen teens, atoms were big. Well, not literally. Studying atoms––asking basal questions astir their structure, what their smallest units were, and really they behaved––was cutting-edge science. And Irving Langmuir wanted successful connected that.
Here's David Kaiser, nan MIT physicist and subject historiographer we’ve been proceeding from this season.
David Kaiser: So 1 of nan things he was really, really concerned astir successful 1919, 1920––exactly this play and a fewer years later––was for immoderate atom that has much than only 1 electron, which is to opportunity practically each atom location is, what's nan mode successful which these aggregate electrons are distributed successful space?
Katie Hafner: Electrons were first identified successful 1897, but scientists didn’t yet cognize really precisely they fresh into nan building of nan atom. Some of nan world's starring physicists were trying to fig this out. And Irving Langmuir was cooking up a beautiful extremist theory.
David Kaiser: It sounds for illustration he was really trying to do this massive, you know, breathtaking and eager rethink of nan quality of matter and atomic structure. So, it wouldn't astonishment maine if successful 1920 Langmuir was for illustration here's thing really, really new.
Katie Hafner: On April 27, 1920, astatine nan concluding convention of nan National Academy of Sciences’ yearly convention successful Washington, D.C. Irving Langmuir gave a talk titled nan Quantel Theory: a caller mentation of nan ether, matter and electro-magnetism.
David Kaiser: It sounds for illustration he's hypothesizing that abstraction and clip each mightiness person smallest units aliases chunks, almost for illustration their benignant of quanta of space-time itself.
Katie Hafner: Hence nan very original sanction "Quantel."
The time aft Langmuir presented his paper, scores of newspapers astir nan state carried nan story. Some put nan news connected their beforehand page. The New York Times wisely buried it connected page 10, but successful nan Washington Post, it wasn’t astir connected nan beforehand page; it was nan lead article.
David Kaiser: Thinks he's furthering Einstein's work. It was described arsenic if is this was nan champion point since relativity theory.
Katie Hafner: Except it wasn't. Several of nan stories pointed retired that different scientists successful attendance astatine nan convention were near scratching their heads. Irving Langmuir's Quantel Theory was dormant wrong. And here's nan overseas thing: each nan breathless newspaper stories were fundamentally identical.
And that was nan hyperactive GE PR instrumentality astatine work. One of nan men successful nan news bureau astir apt sat down astatine his typewriter and banged retired a communicative complete pinch a comparison to Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton, which past sewage sent to newspapers everywhere. After all, Irving Langmuir was nan company's prima intelligence and this was thing to crow about.
But successful this case, nan crow was to beryllium eaten.
And conscionable arsenic quickly arsenic Langmuir’s mind-bending mentation made its media splash, it disappeared. Straight backmost into nan ether from whence it apparently came.
And passim Langmuir's flashy effort to redefine nan quality of matter, Katharine was astatine nan lab, keeping her caput down, moving experiments for him. So what did nan very practical, experiment-driven, empirically grounded Katharine Blodgett deliberation of her celebrated new-ish leader claiming to person discovered thing genuinely universe-bending, only to move retired to beryllium wrong.
Did she, for illustration each different physicist who heard astir these quantels, scratch her head? Did she ever inquire him astir it?
The answer: we don't know. But, nan full debacle did thing to interrupt their partnership, and it did return Langmuir’s attraction to matters person astatine hand.
In nan early 1920s, Irving and Katharine took connected a deceptively elemental problem: really galore electrons tin you really get retired of a basking ligament wrong a vacuum tube? Heating nan filament releases electrons, but they quickly heap up into a antagonistic unreality that chokes disconnected nan current. Together, Langmuir and Blodgett turned that invisible postulation jam into mathematics, moving retired really nan style of nan electrons––cylindrical, spherical, aliases flat––determined really galore electrons could get through. Those equations could beryllium a blueprint for designing brighter lightbulbs and much powerful vacuum tubes. The papers that resulted from this activity are co-authored by Langmuir and Blodgett, marking 1 of nan earliest, astir documentable places wherever Katharine Blodgett appears arsenic Langmuir’s existent intelligence partner.
At nan aforesaid clip that Katharine was uncovering her groove arsenic a scientist, she was putting down roots successful nan community. In 1922, she joined nan First Presbyterian Church.
She was intelligibly a beloved congregant wherever she went because erstwhile she wrote to nan curate astatine her aged religion successful New York requesting a missive of dismission, which is fundamentally a merchandise successful bully standing, he wrote backmost to opportunity really pleased he was to perceive she'd recovered a caller Church successful Schenectady. He added that she would ever beryllium 1 of his children––that's pastor-speak for "you will ever matter to me."
At her caller church, she started school a Bible study class.
But, each piety each nan clip wasn’t for Katharine. She enjoyed life excessively much, moreover connected Sundays. She took her passion for experimentation into nan kitchen. And Sunday was popover day, nan time she baked popovers and, of course, approached nan task for illustration yet different experiment, changing up nan property of beverage aliases nan ratio of eggs to flour, etc. And she'd person friends complete for meal to measure nan results.
Then, aft breakfast, Church. Then, well, immoderate nan day mightiness offer.
And connected 1 of those afternoons 1 winter, she caught nan attraction of a chap congregant, who sent Katharine an anonymous missive expressing his outrage.
Here’s Benjy again, our versatile dramatist for this season. I put successful him a quiet room for recording, this clip arsenic nan section religion scold:
Benjy Wachter as Congregant: February 13th, 1924. Miss Blodgett, Sunday I saw you pinch a friend, garbed and equipped pinch skis, mounting nan Gloversville car. It shocked maine much than you tin imagine.
I had conscionable travel from church, wherever Mr. Anthony arsenic accustomed had a good sermon.
It spoiled each this. I haven't sewage complete nan effects of it yet.
If God cannot dangle connected his professed followers to take sides his day, upon, who tin he depend?
Katie Hafner: From nan different broadside of nan door, I perceive Benjy extremity reading.
Benjy Wachter: All right. All right. He's not moreover a grammar cop. Shouldn’t it beryllium whom: “upon whom tin he depend?”
Katie Hafner: Like each of america these days, Benjy's easy distracted. So to support things rolling along, I don’t show Benjy what I’m thinking, which is that Katharine would applaud him. She was a strict grammarian who occasionally inserted corrections into her colleagues’ writing.
She nary uncertainty caught nan who-whom correction and must person really rolled her eyes. But this anonymous ill-wisher was not finished.
Benjy Wachter as Congregant: As agelong arsenic nan 10 Commandments stand, neither God nor man tin punishment playing tennis, golf, skiing, theater, and nan like, worldly amusements arsenic God asks only 1 time of 7 for him and that to support it holy.
I wish you would springiness this matter prayerful and superior consideration. I americium a personnel of our church.
Katie Hafner: What did you deliberation of this guy?
Benjy Wachter: I would opportunity he needs to get a hobby, but that's really his main grievance is that group person hobbies astatine all.
Katie Hafner: I mentioned nan missive to Cathy George, nan curate you heard from successful section one.
There's Katharine cavorting astir connected her skis pinch her friend. I mean, this was a female who, she loved sports, she loved to ski, I guess, and she had nary qualms astir going retired location skiing connected a Sunday.
Cathy George: What I would opportunity astir that is that she had a very free tone and a batch of self-confidence, and she had a capacity to deliberation independently astir belief and to understand that if God is gonna beryllium portion of life, God was gonna beryllium portion of skiing and that she was making decisions that she didn't consciousness shame for.
Katie Hafner: We couldn’t find immoderate archiving connected really Katharine reacted to that missive from nan cranky congregant, but knowing her arsenic we connected nan Blodgett accumulation squad now consciousness we do, we deliberation she was astir apt conscionable amused. And she kept connected making nan astir of her Sunday afternoons.
Heaven only knows what her anonymous professional would person thought of nan tongue-in-cheek gardener's dream we found, neatly typed retired connected a expanse of paper. It’s an entreaty for a small divine assistance successful nan garden. It goes,
"Oh lord, assistance that successful immoderate measurement it whitethorn rainfall each day. Say, from astir midnight until 3 o'clock successful nan morning. But not connected nan campion, alyssum, lavender and others which you successful your infinite contented cognize are drought-loving plants. I will constitute their names connected a spot of insubstantial if you like.”
Katharine was profoundly religious, but surely not willing successful hewing to what she saw arsenic needlessly rigid, one-size-fits-all rules.
And Katharine Blodgett would conscionable support connected inserting herself into situations wherever she wasn’t… altogether expected. And nan adjacent clip she did this, it would beryllium crossed nan Atlantic.
More astir that… aft nan break.
Katie Hafner: At slightest arsenic early arsenic her elder twelvemonth successful college, Katharine Blodgett saw a PhD successful her future. And being astatine nan GE laboratory only served to reenforce that ambition because nan basal physics she sewage successful assemblage wasn’t enough. But it wasn’t because she aspired to Irving Langmuir levels of technological acclaim aliases moreover to tally her ain lab. Katharine was convinced that she needed much training truthful that she could beryllium of amended thief to him, Irving Langmuir.
Asked years later whether Irving cared 1 measurement aliases different whether she sewage a PhD, Katharine said she didn't deliberation he did. But she cared, truthful he helped.
Irving had a batch of connections, and among those connections was Sir Ernest Rutherford, a chemist and physicist primitively from New Zealand who has been called nan begetter of atomic physics.
Sir Ernest ran nan Cavendish Laboratory astatine nan University of Cambridge, celebrated astatine nan clip for its activity successful nan expanding section of atomic and atomic physics.
Sir Ernest was besides known to beryllium a champion of women successful science. Yes, a uncommon bird.
In June of 1924, Langmuir wrote to Sir Ernest recommending Katharine arsenic a Ph.D. candidate.
Katie Hafner: Irving knew what a gem of a intelligence he was sending Sir Ernest’s way. If Sir Ernest had immoderate hesitation, Irving's missive won him over.
Just a fewer months aft that missive landed connected Ernest Rutherford’s desk, Katharine was attending lectures successful nan Physics Department astatine Cambridge that covered a deed parade of subjects that were apical of mind for scientists astatine nan time: particle theory, constitution of matter, thermionics, and X-rays.
When Katharine Blodgett was studying astatine Cambridge, men were mostly not happy astir nan beingness of women. Sir Ernest mightiness person been gender blind, but he was a existent exception.
Marissa Moss: This is simply a clip erstwhile women can't get degrees. They tin spell to classes…
Katie Hafner: That's writer Marissa Moss, who wrote astir women astatine Cambridge successful that era. Women could beryllium for exams and person their results published but different they were held astatine arm’s length. And not that agelong earlier Katharine arrived, female students couldn’t moreover usage nan library. They needed a workaround. Here’s Marissa Moss.
Marissa Moss: They had to person a man lend her nan books.
Katie Hafner: Women had tried to alteration this, much than erstwhile complete nan decades. But nan guidance from their antheral peers wasn’t 1 of solidarity. When women tried, successful 1921 to get afloat nickname arsenic students…
Marissa Moss: The men were truthful outraged. The thought of a female clever clever was absurd. The antheral students really attacked nan college. They tried to put a battering ram into nan gates.
Katie Hafner: You tin still spot nan robust gross that nan men attacked astatine Newnham College, but nan women did negociate immoderate advancement successful that year. Though they didn’t get nickname arsenic equals, undergraduate women sewage thing called a grade title aliases a BA tit for short, which sounds awful. For Katharine, a investigation postgraduate student, that would beryllium a She-h-D
Katharine did each her experimental activity successful nan Cavendish Laboratory, basically, nan physics department, directed by Ernest Rutherford.
Our elder managing producer, Deborah Unger, who lives successful nan U.K., precocious visited wherever nan Cavendish Laboratory is now housed.
Deborah: I'll conscionable commencement recording. I'm recording. So I'm present pinch Ella Wood astatine nan Cavendish Laboratory, nan caller Cavendish Laboratory. And Ella, could you conscionable present yourself and opportunity what you do.
Ella Wood: Yeah. So I'm Ella. I americium a PhD student present astatine nan Cavendish, um, successful nan High G physics group…
Katie Hafner: On apical of being a grad student, Ella has taken it upon herself to analyse nan history of nan female physicists astatine nan Laboratory. She showed Deborah astir nan Cavendish Museum exhibit.
Ella Wood: …the depository objects we person astatine nan Cavendish, there's historically been very small told astir nan women who worked here, but if you walked on this corridor, you could commencement to prime retired each nan women successful these photos and spot that really they were here. Just their stories person ne'er been told.
Katie Hafner: We’re present to talk astir Katharine Blodgett. One of nan photos connected show is simply a group changeable from 1926, wherever Katharine is 1 of 2 women among 40 men. The different female successful that photograph is Esther Poliansky, a promising young physicist who had been recommended to Sir Ernest by nary different than Albert Einstein.
Ella Wood: The 1926 photo, you besides spot a batch of, I mean, famous, celebrated physicists and Nobel Prize winners.
Ella Wood: So you person CTR Wilson, who's celebrated for nan Wilson Cloud Chamber, successful particle physics…
Katie Hafner: She's rattling disconnected names of men successful that photograph who went connected to make awesome discoveries.
Ella Wood: You person Aston who worked on, uh, wide spectrograph and besides won nan Nobel Prize for that. You person Oppenheimer…
Katie Hafner: J. Robert Oppenheimer is conscionable 1 successful this prima studded line-up and Katharine’s correct there, impressing Sir Ernest Rutherford and nan apical physicists astatine nan Cavendish.
Maybe being surrounded by each those brainiacs emboldened alternatively than intimidated Katharine. And obscurity do we spot her whining, successful immoderate measurement astatine all. Looking astatine her journals from nan time, it sounds for illustration she was conscionable thrilled to beryllium successful nan beingness of different technological minds.
During nan wintertime holidays of her 2nd year, Katharine and a friend embarked connected a travel done Weimar, Germany, and had 1 jolly escapade aft another. Her letters location were gushing. She stopped complete successful Göttingen, nan celebrated German hotbed of subject astatine nan time, and wherever Irving had gotten his PhD. And she wrote to a adjacent family friend astatine location that successful Göttingen, nan legendary atomic physicist James Franck came up to her and introduced himself, and she was thrilled.
Here’s what she wrote successful her letter: “if nan heavens had opened up and rained down an angel that waddled up to maine and said, ‘my sanction is Gabriel’ I couldn't person been much surprised." Professor Franck, that divine apparition, moreover took nan clip to show her around.
On apical of each nan exploring, and nan coursework, Katharine was engaged successful nan lab, moving connected her PhD dissertation. The taxable was an hold of nan activity she and Langmuir had been doing backmost successful Schenectady, looking astatine electrons and really they move successful gases and adjacent surfaces. The dissertation was titled "A Method of Measuring nan Mean Free Path of Electrons successful Ionized Mercury Vapour." It's decidedly a mouthful, but it was rather nan ingenious study. Here’s a little primer.
The “mean free path” describes nan mean region a molecule travels earlier it collides pinch different atom. You could deliberation of this benignant of for illustration a crippled of foosball. When you driblet a foosball onto nan table, it will collide pinch 1 of nan integrative players. When nan foosball pings disconnected nan player, it changes direction, continuing on its caller way until it collides pinch different player, and its way changes again. If you added up each conception of region nan foosball traveled, and divided that by nan number of times it collided pinch 1 of nan players, you’d person its mean free path: nan mean region it travels earlier a collision. That's fundamentally what Katharine was trying to fig retired for electrons, arsenic they zip done a state of mercury vapor that's been "ionized"—meaning it's had immoderate of its ain electrons knocked off, creating charged particles.
This is ace important for knowing really energy behaves successful gases, which was a large woody for––you guessed it––the General Electric Company, and nan early improvement of things for illustration neon signs, fluorescent lights, and moreover early electronics.
Sir Ernest appears to person been mighty pleased pinch Katharine’s work.
Deep successful nan archives of nan Cambridge University Library location is simply a little typed, general appraisal written by Sir Ernest discussing Miss Blodgett’s PhD dissertation.
Benjy Wachter arsenic Sir Ernest Rutherford: And she has surely shown overmuch originality and experimental skill.
Katie Hafner: You’re proceeding Sir Ernest arsenic publication by Benjy.
Benjy Wachter arsenic Sir Ernest Rutherford: She has made important contributions to her knowledge successful this astir difficult section of investigation. I see nan thesis of undoubted merit and originality and tin powerfully urge nan campaigner for nan grade of PhD.
Benjy Wachter: Would he opportunity P-haech-D?
Katie Hafner: Well actually, we telephone it a she-hD.
Benjy Wachter: Ooh, good he’s right, he says PhD and he’s right.
Katie Hafner: Well he’s a bully guy.
Benjy Wachter: Yeah. Alright.
Benjy Wachter arsenic Sir Ernest Rutherford: I see nan thesis of undoubted merit and originality and tin powerfully urge nan campaigner for nan grade of PhD. Approved.
Katie Hafner: Sounds for illustration she’s getting a PhD, right? But, no. It was that she-hD, a PhD pinch an asterisk because women were not entitled to person afloat degrees. It took 2 much decades, until 1948, earlier nan University of Cambridge granted women nan correct to person afloat degrees.
So Katharine returned from Cambridge, a astir qualified adjunct to Irving Langmuir. But her life was truthful overmuch much than work. Back successful Schenectady, Katharine threw herself, headlong, into civic life.
She stayed progressive successful nan church, of course. She did immoderate superior farming astatine nan GE Women’s Club, and she besides belonged to thing called nan Zonta Club, a nationalist work nine for master women that was explicitly created because existing civic clubs for illustration nan Rotary Club were men-only.
In nan mid-1920s, joining Zonta signaled that you were a master female successful your ain right. This was conscionable a fewer years aft women successful nan U.S. won nan correct to ballot and Zonta was very overmuch portion of that moment––of women stepping into civic power.
And, drumroll here: Katharine Burr Blodgett was an amateur actress. She joined nan Schenectady Civic Players, and complete nan years she acted successful half a twelve plays. Oh really nan cranky congregant astatine her religion must person hated that.
On apical of each that, 30-year-old Katharine Blodgett did thing highly different for a azygous female successful 1928: presumably pinch money she had from some sides of her family including banal investments, she bought a house. 18 North Church Street is simply a large, two-story row-style location successful nan stockade territory that dates backmost to nan mediate of nan 18th century. And arsenic it happens, it’s kitty area from nan location wherever she was born, and wherever her begetter was murdered.
So certainly, activity was not everything for Katharine. And overmuch of her life astatine activity and extracurricular of activity revolved astir her boss, Irving Langmuir. Katharine was friends pinch him and his wife, Marion. She was besides adjacent to Marion's sister. It was a tight circle of acquaintances.
And erstwhile Katharine fell successful love, it was pinch a friend of Irving’s: John Apperson, a nice-looking, highly admired GE engineer. "Appy," arsenic he was known, was an early, and avid, conservationist, and he was nan Pied Piper of what would go a thriving organization astir Lake George, a pristine reservoir 50 miles northbound of Schenectady.
Appy and different GE group bought play houses––or camps, arsenic nan rustic dwellings were called––at Lake George. They formed a select, invitation-only group of scientists and engineers, hand-picked by Langmuir aliases Apperson. And Katharine bought her spot from a larger parcel bordering Apperson’s.
In 1928, Katharine wanted to wed John Apperson. But he didn't want to wed her. The rejection stung.
As she wrote successful a missive years later, “I knew I had to springiness up nan dream that John Apperson would wed me.” So successful 1928 she locked up her campy and didn’t return to Lake George until, arsenic she put it, “I’d gotten complete it reasonably well.” This, she said, was “the method champion suited to my machinery.”
And that machinery was fragile.
In her papers, nan reference to Apperson and his rejection is made only once, and briefly, successful that missive I conscionable mentioned. Katharine Blodgett ne'er married, though she told an interviewer successful 1942 that she thoroughly believed successful nan institution of marriage. And if we hadn’t chanced upon that missive astir Apperson, we mightiness person assumed that she lived without a life partner because her devotion to subject was excessively great. Or because backmost then, female scientists who sewage joined sewage fired. And GE appears to person been nary exception. But successful Katharine’s case, nan much apt logic is that nan world beyond science, a world wherever you return risks pinch your heart, had disappointed her truthful deeply.
Work. The lab. The experiments. Those were things she could count on. And, so, arsenic ever, she remained Irving Langmuir's assistant. The explanation "assistant" is thing Katharine ne'er seems to person questioned, contempt her evident brilliance, her technological insights, her years of original work.
It mightiness beryllium adjuvant present to deliberation astir nan writings of Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher who lived successful nan early 20th century. A halfway thought of Heidegger's was that our identity, our possibilities, our meaning, moreover our perception, are inseparable from nan world we unrecorded in––the time, history, and civilization astir us.
Heidegger utilized cathedrals for illustration nan 1 successful Freiburg, Germany wherever he lived, arsenic a measurement of talking astir really group are portion of nan world astir them. The arches, nan stonework, nan stained glass. It each seems to turn retired of hundreds of years of quality hands and quality habits. You can’t constituent to 1 infinitesimal erstwhile nan cathedral “began,” aliases to 1 personification who “made” it. It’s nan merchandise of a full world—its tools, its customs, its assumptions, its unspoken rules.
In that sense, we tin besides deliberation of our lives arsenic woven into a tapestry of existing institutions, traditions, and societal structures—not arsenic optional add-ons, but constituting who we are. And because that tapestry of life feels truthful natural, truthful complete, it tin beryllium almost intolerable to ideate that nan shape could beryllium otherwise.
Katharine Burr Blodgett lived wrong specified a tapestry. She was superb and gifted, experimentally fearless, and each spot arsenic insightful arsenic Irving Langmuir. But nan world she stepped into astatine nan GE Research Lab was patterned successful a very peculiar way, 1 that dictated that Langmuir was nan elder scientist, and she, arsenic a woman, his assistant.
Heaven only knows, Irving Langmuir surely didn’t mobility nan shape of that tapestry. Here’s Peggy Schott:
Peggy Schott: When she came backmost from Cambridge, Langmuir was still calling her Miss Blodgett, though she had a PhD.
Katie Hafner: The world Katharine Blodgett worked successful didn’t yet person a spot for personification for illustration her, truthful it took nan brilliance she offered and fresh it into nan domiciled that already existed. And Katharine, ever gracious, ever modest, didn’t push back. And of people she didn't because this was conscionable nan aerial she breathed.
Yet this is wherever nan communicative originates to shift. Because nan much you look astatine what Katharine accomplished aft she returned from Cambridge and passim nan 1930s, nan harder it gets to wrap your mind astir that preassigned role.
It becomes intolerable not to ask: what happens erstwhile a thread successful nan tapestry shines truthful brightly that it changes nan shape astir it?
Next time, connected Layers of Brilliance, Katharine discovers thing big.
Peggy Schott: I deliberation she was astir apt puzzled astatine first. Was puzzled astatine what had conscionable happened. That was her Eureka moment.
Katie Hafner: This has been Lost Women of Science. The producers of this section were Natalia Sánchez Loayza and Sophia Levin, pinch maine arsenic elder producer. Hannah Sammut was our subordinate producer. Elah Feder was our consulting editor. Ana Tuiran was our sound designer and David De Luca Ferrini was our sound engineer.
Elizabeth Younan is our composer and Lisk Feng designed nan art.
Thanks to elder managing shaper Deborah Unger, programme head Eowyn Burtner, my co-executive shaper Amy Scharf, and trading head Lily Whear.
We sewage thief on nan measurement from Benjy Wachter, Eva McCullough, Nadia Knoblauch, Nate Hiatt, Theresa Cullen, and Issa Block Kwong.
A ace typical acknowledgment to Peggy Schott, George Wise, Ellen Lyon, David Kaiser, nan Schenectady County Historical Society, Josh Levi astatine nan Library of Congress, Ben Gross astatine nan Harry Ransom Center astatine UT Austin, and Chris Hunter astatine nan Museum of Innovation and Science successful Schenectady.
And we're grateful to Deborah, Jonathan, and Marijke Alkema for helping america show nan communicative of their Great Aunt Katharine.
We're distributed by PRX and our publishing partner is Scientific American. Our backing comes successful portion from nan Alfred P Sloan Foundation and nan Anne Wojcicki Foundation, and our generous individual donors.
Please sojourn america astatine lostwomenofscience.org, and don't hide to click connected that all-important donate button.
We’re taking adjacent week disconnected because, well, I’ll spare you nan details. So subordinate america successful 2 weeks for nan 2nd half of Layers of Brilliance: The Chemical Genius of Katharine Burr Blodgett. I’m Katie Hafner. See you then.
Senior Producer and Host Katie Hafner
Producers
Natalia Sánchez Loayza
Sophia Levin
Associate Producer
Hannah Sammut
Guests
Chris Hunter
Chris Hunter is curator and president of nan Museum of Innovation and Science successful Schenectady, N.Y. He is simply a starring authority connected nan history of electrical and physics technologies and has curated galore exhibitions astatine nan museum.
Peggy Schott
Peggy Schott is simply a retired chemist astatine Northwestern University and has written astir Katharine Burr Blodgett and her achievements.
David Kaiser
David Kaiser is simply a professor of physics and nan history of subject astatine nan Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Reverend Cathy H. George
The Rev. Dr. Cathy H. George is simply a erstwhile subordinate dean astatine Yale University and leader who has served divers settings ranging from suburban parishes to municipality missions and prisons.
Marissa Moss
Marissa Moss is an writer who writes astir forgotten female scientists. Her books see The Woman Who Split nan Atom: The Life of Lise Meitner and Spying connected Spies: How Elizebeth Smith Friedman Broke nan Nazis’ Secret Codes.
Ella Wood
Ella Wood is simply a doctoral student successful particle physics astatine nan University of Cambridge. She researched and co-developed a integer show for nan Cavendish Museum that highlights nan contributions of women and method unit whose activity often went unrecognised passim nan department’s history, including Katharine Burr Blodgett.
Further Reading
Maxwell’s Enduring Legacy: A Scientific History of nan Cavendish Laboratory. Malcolm Longair. Cambridge University Press, 2016
A Short History of Newnham College, Cambridge. Alice Gardner. Cambridge University Press, 2015
Women astatine Cambridge. Rita McWilliams Tullberg. Cambridge University Press, 1998
Quantum Legacies: Dispatches from an Uncertain World. David Kaiser. University of Chicago Press, 2020
Einstein, Oppenheimer, Feynman: Physics successful nan 20th Century. Open-access online people pinch coach David Kaiser. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Fall 2020
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