Irving Langmuir

Irving Langmuir was born January 31, 1881, and spent four decades at General Electric, from 1909 to 1950, threading chemistry, physics, and engineering into practical invention. In 1919 he published "The Arrangement of Electrons in Atoms and Molecules," building on Gilbert N. Lewis's cubical atom and Walther Kossel's bonding work into what he called the "concentric theory of atomic structure." His presentation skills popularized the theory so effectively that he landed in a priority dispute with Lewis—credit for the idea belonged mostly to Lewis, but Langmuir had made it stick. Along the way h…