Irving Langmuir

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Irving Langmuir

Irving Langmuir [ ˈlæŋmjʊə ] (born January 31, 1881 in Brooklyn , New York , † August 16, 1957 in Woods Hole , Massachusetts ) was an American chemist and physicist . In 1932 he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry .

life and work

After graduating ( Bachelor of Science , BS) from Columbia University in the mining department in 1903, he worked at the Institute for Physical Chemistry of the later Nobel Prize winner Walther Nernst in Göttingen, and in 1906 he worked under Friedrich Dolezalek's work on partial reunification of dissociated gases in the course of cooling PhD .

Langmuir then taught at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken , New Jersey , until 1909 , then in the General Electrics Research Laboratory (Schenectady, New York). During his time there he expanded several theories in physics and chemistry, developed the condensation of mercury vacuum pump , the gas filled tungsten filament lamp , many vacuum - Radio tubes and a method of welding with atomic hydrogen ( Arcatomschweißen ). In 1932 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in the field of surface chemistry .

His first scientific contributions came from the continuation of his doctoral thesis , which dealt with incandescent lamps . By improving the vacuum technology , he was able to develop the high-vacuum bulb, a year later, he discovered that the life of a tungsten - filament by filling the lamp with an inert gas such. B. argon could be extended. Further investigations into filaments in a vacuum and various gas conditions led him to study charged particles from hot filaments (thermionic emission ).

Langmuir was one of the first scientists to work with plasma and he was the first to name these ionized gases. He developed the concept of electron temperature and invented a method to measure this temperature in 1924, the Langmuir probe measurement named after him .

During the First World War , Langmuir led a working group on submarine location on behalf of the Navy .

After the First World War , Langmuir also contributed to atomic theory and the elucidation of the atomic structure through the concept of valence shells and isotopes .

In 1916 Langmuir was able to show experimentally that gas molecules do not jump off surfaces elastically, but adsorb as a monolayer . The Langmuir isotherm derived from this is one of the fundamental models of physisorption and chemisorption of substances at interfaces. Katherine Blodgett joined General Electric in 1917 . Together they developed the concept of the monolayer and the two-dimensional physics that describe such surfaces. In addition to gas adsorption on solids, they increasingly dealt with boundary layers of organic molecules and polymers at water-air interfaces, which are therefore called Langmuir-Blodgett layers . In 1932 Langmuir received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his “discoveries and investigations into surface chemistry”. The unit for the dose in surface chemistry Langmuir was named after him.

After 1938 Langmuir became increasingly interested in atmospheric sciences and meteorology . He observed regular swaths of algae formed by the wind on the sea surface and was the first to describe the phenomenon of the Langmuir circulation, which was later named after him . In addition, by using simple physical arguments, he refuted the common mistake at the time that the throat was the fastest flying creature in the world at over 1200 km / h. In 1953 he introduced the term pathological science in a lecture .

In the 1940s, at General Electric and Vincent Schaeffer, he investigated artificial weather effects by inoculating the clouds with dry ice (later Bernard Vonnegut at General Electric proposed silver iodide for this purpose).

In honor of Langmuir, the journal has been Langmuir the American Chemical Society for physico-chemical aspects of Colloids and the interface Sciences named after him. In his honor, the American Physical Society and the American Chemical Society present the Irving Langmuir Award in physical chemistry and chemical physics, respectively.

He was a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1918). He has received the Faraday Medal (IEE) , the Franklin Medal , the Perkin Medal from the Society for Chemical Industry, and the John J. Carty Award from the National Academy. Since 1932 he was a member of the Leopoldina , since 1935 a Foreign Member of the Royal Society and since 1949 an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . In 1951 he became a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences . Since 1960 he has given its name to Langmuir Cove , a bay on the west coast of the Antarctic Graham Land.

literature

  • Len Fisher: Journey to the heart of the breakfast ice cream . Forays into the physics of everyday things. First edition. Campus , Frankfurt am Main / New York NY 2003, ISBN 3-593-37193-6 , pp. 147, 163 f., 266 f., 270 (English: How to dunk a donut . Translated by Carl Freytag).
  • George Wise: Irving Langmuir (1881-1957) . In: Paul A. Redhead (Ed.): Vacuum Science and Technology: Pioneers of the 20th Century . 1997, ISBN 1-56396-248-9 , pp. 79–82 ( online [accessed December 7, 2012] in English).
  • C. Guy Suits, Miles J. Martin: National Academy of Sciences: Irving Langmuir 1881-1957, A Biographical Memoir. Washington DC, NAS 1974 ( online, PDF )

Web links

Commons : Irving Langmuir  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ biographical data, publications and Academic pedigree of Irving Langmuir at academictree.org, accessed on February 25 2018th
  2. ↑ Johannes-Geert Hagmann: How physics made itself heard - American physicists engaged in "practical" research during the First World War . Physik Journal 14 (2015) No. 11, pp. 43–46.
  3. ↑ Irving Langmuir: The constitution and fundamental properties of solids and liquids. Part I. Solids . In: Journal of the American Chemical Society . 38, No. 11, November 1916, pp. 2221-2295. doi : 10.1021 / ja02268a002 .
  4. ↑ Irving Langmuir: The speed of the deer fly . In: Science . tape 87 , no. 2254 , March 11, 1938, pp. 233-234 , doi : 10.1126 / science.87.2254.233 .
  5. ↑ Irving Langmuir: Pathological Science. Colloquium Talk 1953.
  6. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed December 30, 2019 .
  7. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter L. Académie des sciences, accessed on January 8, 2020 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Langmuir, Irving
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American chemist, physicist, and Nobel Prize winner
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York (State)
DATE OF DEATH August 16, 1957
Place of death Woods Hole, Massachusetts