Langmuir's World.

The brilliant research career of Dr. Irving Langmuir (1881-1957) yielded inventions of the gas-filled incandescent light bulb, passive sonar, hydrogen welding, atomic theory, surface films, smoke screens, & cloud seeding for weather control.  Langmuir, the Nobel laureate in Chemistry in 1932, thrived in the unique atmosphere of creative freedom at General Electric’s research lab in Schenectady, NY.

            Langmuir’s interests extended far beyond the laboratory however, making him a skilled filmmaker, pioneer downhill skier, and avid mountain climber as well.

            Whether flying with Charles Lindbergh in The Spirit of St. Louis or climbing the Matterhorn in Switzerland, Langmuir’s life exemplified an insatiable intellectual thirst to explore and explain worlds as small as a hydrogen atom to as large as the weather across the United States.  Physicist Max Born described Langmuir as a “wonderful human being — a remarkable mixture of the deepest thoughtfulness and the wildest energy.”

            Langmuir’s grandson Roger Summerhayes, a chemistry teacher and filmmaker, presents an overview of Langmuir’s life.  Summerhayes produced the documentary Langmuir’s World in 1998, including original footage shot by Langmuir, featuring such famous colleagues as Edison, Einstein, Bohr, Rutherford, Curie, Planck, and Heisenberg.  Interviews with colleagues include novelist Kurt Vonnegut discussing how he based his novel Cat’s Cradle on Langmuir’s ideas and work.