Born on 31st January 1881 in Brooklyn, New York to parents of modest professions, Irving Langmuir would go on to excel in the fields of Physics and Chemistry and win the highest possible accolade for a scientist; a Nobel Prize, amongst many other awards. His endless quest for knowledge through research lasted 50 years [1] and throughout his quest he revolutionised the lightbulb and determined the ‘concentric theory of atomic structure’ [2].
Langmuir was one of four boys born to Charles and Sadie Langmuir. He led a diverse childhood, travelling Europe with his family due to his father’s profession as an insurance executive; this could have fed his creativity as a child having the opportunity to discover new places. His parents were reportedly enthralled by record keeping and inspired this passion in their children. Irving showed insuppressible interest in observing nature and this enthusiasm followed him into his professional work and he kept precise diaries of his results. His older brother, Arthur was arguably the biggest influence in encouraging his flair for science, helping him set up a lab in his room and answering endless questions from the inquisitive Arthur.
Throughout his younger years, Irving attended schools in Paris and America whilst travelling with his parents. At the age of 22, in 1903, he graduated from Columbia University with a degree in metallurgical engineering. Despite being awarded his degree in engineering, Irving, inspired by his brother decided to pursue his love of chemistry instilled in him from a young child. As a result he joined Göttingen University under the supervision of Walther Nernst where he achieved and M.A and Ph.D. in 1906. During this time, Langmuir made his first contribution to science in assisting in the invention of the Nernst Lamp.
As well as being a pioneering scientist, Langmuir maintained a number of hobbies which mostly lead back to his love of nature as a child. As well as boosting the Boy Scouts community of America in the 1900s, he was also deeply involved in environmental conservation efforts in the Adirondack Mountains. This sparked controversy with General Electric as he believed that the area should be open to the public for boating, skiing and other activities.
In addition, Langmuir was the first to introduce Alberg skiing (skiing from top to bottom of a mountain) to North America which he learnt during his time in Germany. He promoted this sport across the country and took expeditions out to the Adirondacks, encouraging the teenagers he took to build their own skis with metal edges.
Upon returning to America from his studies in Germany, Langmuir worked for low pay at the educational institution at Stevens Institute of Technology until 1909 when he decided to put his scientific mind to good use and joined General Electric; a new company at the time, which in 2017 achieved the accolade of being the 13th largest firm in the U.S by gross revenue [3]. It was during his time at GE that Langmuir’s work prospered as he was doing something he was truly passionate about.
The invention of the light bulb by Thomas Edison (to be debated in future articles) in 1879 revolutionised lives across the globe and is arguably one of the most essential inventions that was contributed by modern Physics. However, Edison’s incandescent lightbulb was extremely inefficient as Edison had little understanding of the science of why the bulb worked and since the day of its invention, other scientists contested to invent something better. Langmuir assisted in the invention of the Nernst lamp in 1897 which used a small ceramic rod heated until glowing rather than the bamboo and cellulose filament of Edison’s bulb; making it more efficient and longer lasting [5].
At General Electric, Langmuir was tasked with improving on this further. Langmuir went on to discover that rather than creating an incandescent bulb which has a vacuum around the filament, as with Edison’s bulb, we can fill the vacuum with an inert gas such as argon in order to prolong the life of the filament as Argon is unreactive so doesn’t burn away the filament. This discovery was estimated to save Americans 1 million dollars a night and there is not one person alive today that hasn’t benefitted from this breakthrough [4].
When a substance coats a surface in a single layer, the pressure of the gas determines the coverage of the surface as there a limited number of ‘empty space’ to be filled [5]. In 1916, Langmuir derived an essential equation of surface chemistry which determines the fractional coverage of a surface with molecules of a medium above the surface. One of the ways which Langmuir utilised this equation was to reduce the blackening on the glass of a lightbulb by coating the inside with a hydrogen layer [5].
His research in 1917 on the chemistry of oil films made him the recipient of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He developed a method of determining molecular structure without the knowledge of spectroscopy. Langmuir discovered that in an oil which contains an aliphatic hydrocarbon which includes a hydrophilic end group which lies above surface of water in a one molecule thick layer above; the molecules are orientated such that the hydrophilic end group points down in the water whilst the hydrophobic chains are positioned on surface [3].
To learn more please read his Nobel Lecture here: https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1932/langmuir-lecture.pdf
Irving Langmuir has been described as the ‘father of modern lighting’ [7] as he tirelessly worked to transform Edison’s bulb in numerous ways during his PhD and during his time at General Electric. His work in surface chemistry awarded him a Nobel Prize, the highest accolade for any scientist, and aided future generations understanding of molecular configuration which was confirmed when spectroscopy methods were developed. In addition to his impressive and vast research, Langmuir had numerous hobbies and was devoted to sharing them with others.
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References
[1] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Irving-Langmuir
[2] http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja02227a002
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric#Formation
[4]
[5] http://www.edisontechcenter.org/IrvingLangmuir.html
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding
[7] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12045-008-0068-z
