Layers of Brilliance: The Chemical Genius of Katharine Burr Blodgett - Episode One
About this episode
The episode explores the early life and education of Katharine Burr Blodgett, highlighting her contributions during World War I.
In the first of this five-part season we trace Katharine’s early years as she picks up European languages, her early scientific education at a progressive New York school for girls and then Bryn Mawr, a women’s college. She seems destined to end up working at the General Electric Company’ s industrial research lab, but first she must prove herself at the University of Chicago, where, in the middle of World War I, she works to improve the life-saving gas mask. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Topics covered
- scientific education
- women in science
- historical figures
- World War I
- chemical engineering
Keywords
- Katharine Burr Blodgett
- General Electric
- University of Chicago
- women's education
- gas mask
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: General Electric Company, University of Chicago
Places: New York, Bryn Mawr
More episodes of Lost Women of Science
- Elizabeth Roboz Einstein: The Determined Genius Behind a Multiple Sclerosis Breakthrough
- Conversation: If I Am Right, and I Know I Am: Inge Lehmann, the Woman Who Discovered Earth’s Innermost Secret
- BONUS: Agnes Pockels and the Kitchen Sink Myth
- Layers of Brilliance: Vanishing Act -- Episode Six
- Layers of Brilliance: The Self You Have to Live With - Episode Five
- Layers of Brilliance: The Breakthrough - Episode Four
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