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

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/lost-women-of-science-4474223/layers-of-brilliance-the-air-she-breathed-episode-three
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/lost-women-of-science-4474223/layers-of-brilliance-the-air-she-breathed-episode-three.md
Podcast: [Lost Women of Science](https://stenobird.com/podcast/lost-women-of-science-4474223)
Published: 2026-02-12T03:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://play.prx.org/listen?ge=prx_413_d5f5f858-a526-4790-8298-e996f683e2ac&uf=https%3A%2F%2Ffeed.lostwomenofscience.org
Audio file: 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
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/lost-women-of-science-4474223/episodes/layers-of-brilliance-the-air-she-breathed-episode-three
Duration seconds: 2380

## Resource

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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## Transcript

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