Katharine Burr Blodgett

Katharine Burr Blodgett (January 10, 1898 – October 12, 1979) was the first woman to to earn a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cambridge, in 1926. She spent her career working for General Electric, where she invented low-reflectance "invisible" glass.

What I'm struck most by when reading about her life and work is that she just did her thing and didn't let anything get in her way. I'm sure it wasn't entirely that simple, of course.

She knew what she wanted to do with her life, and did it.

Her childhood was spent in France, where her mother moved the family a few years after Katharine's father was killed. She did well in school. The family's finances made it easy for her to enroll in private schools, but she had a scholarship for Bryn Mawr, where she earned her undergraduate degree.

She went on to earn a master's in chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1918, and was quickly hired by General Electric, where her father had worked as a patent attorney in the years before he was shot. She worked with Irving Langmuir, who'd worked with her father, making her the first female scientists hired by GE.

With his encouragement, she pursued a Ph.D. in physics, becoming the first woman to earn that degree at Cambridge when she graduated in 1926.

Over the course of her long career with GE she developed a wide variety of projects, including several with military applications during both World War I and II. She is most well known for her invention of nonreflecting glass in 1938 -- a technique still used in the manufacture of optical equipment, cameras, telescopes, and eyeglasses to cut down on glare.

She lived her personal life in a similar vein. She never married, and instead lived in a kind of long-term platonic (or maybe not?) relationship with two different women over the course of her lifetime. She was active in her community, and visited with her family regularly.

Her niece, Katharine Blodgett Gebbie, was named after her, and grew up to follow in her aunt's footsteps, pursuing her own career in physics.

You can read more about her work at GE at the Chemical Heritage Foundation's historical profile of Irving Langmuir and Katharine Burr Blodgett

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