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 he invented the gas-filled incandescent lamp and hydrogen welding technique, and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry followed in 1932 for his surface chemistry work. He died August 16, 1957, leaving his name on a New Mexico atmospheric research lab and an American Chemical Society journal.