Katharine Blodgett was born on January 10, 1898, in Schenectady, New York, United States, the daughter of George Reddington Blodgett, a patent attorney, and Katharine Buchanan Burr. Her father died before she was born, having been shot by an intruder in the family home. She was raised in New York City.
Katharine Blodgett attended the Rayson School in New York City. In 1913, Blodgett entered Bryn Mawr College, graduating with a B. S. degree in 1917; she received an M. S. degree from the University of Chicago in 1918. She entered Newnham College of Cambridge University in 1924. There she studied under Sir Ernest Rutherford, and in 1926 she received the first Ph. D. in physics awarded to a woman by that institution. Blodgett received honorary degrees from Elmira College, Western College, Russell Sage College, and Brown University.
In 1919 Katharine Blodgett began a forty-four-year association with the scientific staff of the General Electric (GE) Research Laboratory in Schenectady, where her father had worked. For many years Blodgett worked as an assistant to, and later as a coworker of, Irving Langmuir, a physical chemist who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1932. Later she assisted Langmuir in improving tungsten filaments in electric light bulbs. In 1933, Blodgett turned to the research for which she became best known, on monomolecular films. She invented a step gauge. Each layer of film would reflect a particular shade of white light, depending on its thickness. In 1938, GE announced that she had developed a nonreflecting "invisible" glass. This was accomplished by applying forty-four thin soap films one molecule (or about four-millionths of an inch) thick to ordinary glass, eliminating glare and in effect rendering the glass invisible. Blodgett and other scientists continued research on durable nonglare film, which later was used on camera lenses and optical equipment. These nonreflective surface coatings allow the efficient passage of 99 percent of the light striking them, compared with 92 percent passing through ordinary glass. This development also proved invaluable to the American war effort during World War II. Another phase of Blodgett's work involved the placement of thin films on leaded glass. Different numbers of layers produced a variety of colors when their thickness ranged between two-millionths and thirty-millionths of an inch.
During World War II, Blodgett worked on methods of deicing airplane wings and developed a denser, more rapidly accumulating smoke screen. A machine she devised needed only two quarts of oil to cover several acres, and the resulting smoke hovered longer before dissipating because the oil droplets were of microscopic size. The chief of the Army Chemical Warfare Service praised the protective qualities of the device, stating that it had been the "greatest lifesaver of our troops and was responsible for the small number of casualties" during the Sicilian campaign. While at work on a project for the United States Army Signal Corps after World War II, Blodgett adapted thin films for use in a device measuring humidity at very high altitudes when carried by weather balloons. Her last published study prior to her retirement from GE, a joint project with T. A. Vanderslice, had to do with the cleansing of gases in ionization gauges. Blodgett retired from GE in 1963. She spent her summer weekends in a cottage on the shores of Lake George, where she enjoyed swimming and boating. Blodgett died in Schenectady, New York.
Katharine Blodgett is best known for her invention of a step gauge (also called a color gauge), a device that could measure the thickness of films down to one millionth of an inch, and "invisible" or nonreflective glass. She later also developed electrically conducting glass. Blodgett was given the Achievement Award of the American Association of University Women in 1945, the Francis P. Garvan Medal of the American Chemical Society in 1951, and, in 1972, the Progress Medal of the Photographic Society of America, the first woman to be so honored.
Blodgett was president of both the local Traveler's Aid Society and the Zonta Club, a service organization of executive and professional women.
Katharine Blodgett was an energetic woman of less than average height, she was active in the civic affairs of Schenectady.
Quotes from others about the person
"Blodgett was a gifted experimenter with a rare combination of theoretical and practical ability. " - Irving Langmuir, physical chemist
