biography
pronunciation:
[langmyoor]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1881–1957)
|
| biography:
| Chemist, born in Brooklyn, New York, USA. After teaching chemistry at the Stevens Institute of Technology (1906–9), he began work at the General Electric laboratory under Willis Whitney (1909). Langmuir's first major contribution was to show that a nitrogen-filled light bulb burned more brightly than a vacuum bulb. He went on to the study of vacuums, inventing the mercury pump (1916), which enabled the creation of very low pressures needed to produce vacuum tubes. At that time he also began investigating molecular activity occurring in film surfaces that were just one molecule thick. In addition to his various laboratory discoveries, he made theoretical contributions with his explanation of the phenomenon of adsorption, and he also developed concepts fundamental to the field of thermonuclear fusion and coined the term plasma to describe ionized gas. In 1932 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work in surface chemistry, and also that year was named associate director of the General Electric laboratories, where he remained until his retirement (1950). During World War 2 he worked for the US military on problems of ice formation on aircraft wings that led to his 1946 discovery of a method to produce rain by seeding clouds with dry ice and silver iodide. |
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