Why did the public forget Katharine Burr Blodgett’s brilliant legacy?

March 13, 2026 24 min read Add Us On Google Add SciAm Why did the public forget Katharine Burr Blodgett’s brilliant legacy? We trace the final chapter of Katharine Burr Blodgett’s career, her retirement from GE and her disappearance from public memory By Katie Hafner , Natalia Sánchez Loayza , Sophia Levin , Hannah Sammut & The Lost Women of Science Initiative Lisk Feng ( image ); Lily Whear ( composite ) How is a legacy preserved, and how is someone forgotten? Determined to make a final name for himself, Nobel Prize–winning chemist Irving Langmuir ventured into science that many would classify as what he himself called “pathological science,” or “wishful thinking,” while chemist and physicist Katharine Burr Blodgett continued her work as a diligent experimenter. But Blodgett’s contributions faded from both the General Electric Company’s and the public’s memory. We visit her grave to say goodbye—and we look at the wisdom she imparted to the next generation of inquiring minds. LISTEN TO THE PODCAST On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing . By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. TRANSCRIPT Episode 6 - Vanishing Act Announcer: Friends, they said it's a man's world, but don't you believe it. It's a woman's world too. Women are not only doing a fine job in the home , They're also making substantial contributions to scientific work in the General Electric Research Laboratory. At Schenectady, you will find many women scientists doing interesting and important work. This is Dr. Katharine Blodgett, an authority on the properties of very thin coatings and films. Her work in this field has made her famous among scientists throughout the world. Katie Hafner: In a promotional film from 1954, Katharine Blodgett is shown working on semiconductors, the cornerstone of the new field of electronics. She's now 56 years old, her big breakthrough, the discovery of non-reflecting glass, nearly 20 years behind her. She’s still respected and celebrated. In 1951, for instance, she was honored by the American Chemical Society for her work in surface chemistry. But as that decade wore on, she gradually dropped away. And today, ask most anyone, even those who live in Schenectady, if the name Katharine Burr Blodgett rings a bell, and this is what you hear. Misc Voices: That is a name I have never heard before. I don't know who that was. Didn't she swim the Suez Canal? Oh wait, no, that was somebody else. No. Sounds familiar. I don’t know. Oh, remind me. What was her background? She was Dr. Blodgett's wife. Katie Hafner : I'm Katie Hafner and this is Lost Women of Science. Today, the final episode of Layers of Brilliance, the chemical genius of Katharine Burr Blodgett. We're calling this episode Vanishing Act. What lasts? What disappears? And who decides? Because forgetting isn’t an accident. It’s a process. So how did the world come to forget Katharine Burr Blodgett? And what of her boss, Irving Langmuir? What happens when a scientist flies too close to the sun… or, in this case, to the clouds? I went to Schenectady last summer, and one of the first things I did was look for the house Katharine lived in for more than 50 years, at 18 North Church Street in the city’s historic Stockade District. Diagonally across from Katharine’s, I could see the house on Front Street, where Katharine was born, and where her father was murdered in 1897. I was delighted to see a plaque on Katharine’s old house. How nice of the city to honor her with a plaque! But … not so fast. When I got close enough to read the plaque, my delight dissolved. The name on the plaque at 18 North Church Street is Benjamin van Vleck, who, according to the plaque, lived there in 1735. This Benjamin was part of one of the early Dutch families to settle in Schenectady in the 18th century. Now even Katharine’s old house is tipping its hat to someone else. So what happened? After her 1938 discovery of non-reflecting glass, Katharine had become one of the General Electric Company’s most celebrated scientists. She was invited to give talks and asked to sit for interviews. Several colleges and universities awarded her an honorary degree. Although her non-reflecting films were never commercialized – they were too soft and were wiped off too easily for use in actual products – GE did successfully commercialize one piece of her research: The color-gauge Katharine created to track film thickness. It did this by matching the color a thin film reflected to the number of layers it contained. Following her most intense period of celebrity in 1939, courtesy of the exuberant GE PR machine, Katharine returned to her science, and in the never-a-dull-mom