# Layers of Brilliance: The Air She Breathed -- Episode Three

An episode of [Lost Women of Science](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1590670779), 12 Feb 2026, 40 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/sblTq32fyWAjsHzze2LG/dovetail.prxu.org/413/d5f5f858-a526-4790-8298-e996f683e2ac/Layers_of_Brilliance-Episode_03_Part_01.mp3

The only woman in a laboratory filled with men, Katharine Burr Blodgett soon becomes indispensable as an assistant to The General Electric Company’s most famous scientist, Irving Langmuir. Their working relationship is an elegant symbiosis: her forte is experimentation, his is scientific theory. We follow their partnership as they successfully find ways to build a better lightbulb but Langmuir stumbles with an off-the-wall theory of matter. All the while, Katharine builds her life in Schenectady: going to church, making new friends, falling in love. In 1924, she embarks on a new journey to the University of Cambridge, where she studies with some of the most prominent physicists of the 20th century. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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