Irving Langmuir

He married Marion Mersereau in 1912. They couple adopted two children, Kenneth and Barbara.

He was an avid outdoorsman whose hobbies included hiking, mountain climbing, skiing, swimming, and boating. Always open to new experiences, he learned to pilot a plane at age 49.

He endured a brief illness before dying of a heart attack on August 16, 1957. He was 76.

Irving Langmuir was born on January 31, 1881, in Brooklyn, New York, as the third of the four children of Charles Langmuir and Sadie, née Comings. His father was an insurance executive.

Both his parents encouraged their children to be curious about their surroundings and advised them to carefully observe nature. Irving received his early education from various schools and institutes in America and Paris.

As a student, he developed an interest in chemistry, physics, and mathematics. He graduated high school from Chestnut Hill Academy in 1898.

His elder brother Arthur was a research chemist and was an early influence on young Irving. Arthur encouraged his brother’s scientific pursuits and helped him set up his first chemistry lab in the corner of his bedroom.

Irving went on to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in metallurgical engineering (Met.E.) from the Columbia University School of Mines in 1903. He then studied under Nobel laureate Walther Nernst at the University of Göttingen in Germany.

Irving Langmuir began teaching at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, a job he held until 1909. Later that year he took up a position at the General Electric research laboratory (Schenectady, New York), where he eventually became Associate Director.

During this time, improving the early tungsten-filament incandescent light bulbs was one of the ongoing projects at the research lab. The glass envelops of these bulbs blackened over time and the tungsten filaments were relatively short-lived.

Langmuir began his investigations and discovered that the blackening of the bulbs resulted from the deposition of tungsten that evaporated from the hot filament. He came up with an improved design for the tungsten filament, which eventually led to a better and commercially successful incandescent bulb.

He also studied gases, and did significant research on hydrogen which led to the development of an atomic hydrogen welding torch. His investigation of thermionic emission—the ejection of electrons from a heated surface—resulted in the invention of a fast and efficient vacuum pump.

In the 1910s he published a series of important papers on the adsorption, condensation, and evaporation of gas molecules at solid surfaces and on the arrangements of molecules in the surface layers of liquids.

Irving Langmuir developed the first true vacuum triodes at the General Electric research laboratory in 1915. The earliest vacuum tubes strongly resembled incandescent light bulbs, and the development of the diffusion pump and improvements made by Langmuir led to the development of high-vacuum tubes.