Katharine Burr Blodgett

Katharine Burr Blodgett (January 10, 1898 – October 12, 1979) was an American physicist and chemist known for her advances in surface chemistry. Among her inventions is the world’s first non-reflecting glass – an advancement that has impacted everything from eyeglasses and microscopes to submarine periscopes and spy cameras in World War II to projectors and cameras in the movie industry and today’s nanotechnology. She was one of the first women hired as a scientist at General Electric Laboratories. in 1918, and in 1926 became the first woman to be awarded a PhD in Physics from the University of Cambridge (working with Sir Ernest Rutherford). Blodgett held eight patents and received many awards including the Francis Garvan Medal from the American Chemical Society and a posthumous induction to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Recognizing Blodgett’s advances in commercial applications of physics and in interface science, The Royal Society of Chemistry, the Society of Chemical Industry, and the Institute of Physics have named awards in her honor. In her discovery of the technique to create non-reflecting or “invisible” glass, Blodgett worked with Irving Langmuir. Together they developed the Langmuir-Blodgett technique, which involves transferring a single layer of molecules from a liquid surface to a solid surface. The result is a one-molecule-thin film, which is the precise width to cancel out the reflection of glass. This technique and resulting film, both named for Blodgett and Langmuir, continue to serve advances in materials science and nanotechnology.

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