Katharine Burr Blodgett

Katharine Burr Blodgett leans over a shallow glass-sided tank at the General Electric Research Laboratory in 1938, adjusting a fitting at its edge. It was a publicity photograph, taken while she was doing her best-known research in surface chemistry and thin films. Working with Irving Langmuir, she learned to lay down coatings one molecule thick, layer by layer, and in 1938 she used the method to make glass that barely reflects light, the forerunner of the nonreflective coatings on camera lenses and eyeglasses.