Irving Langmur and money

Irving Langmur is an American physicist and chemical, Nobel laureate of 1932 for work in the field of surface chemistry. After receiving such a prestigious reward, of course, he no longer had to worry about food, but he was not always a Nobel laureate, and, like many others, his path began in obscurity and concern for the daily bread.

Langmur's father was not a very successful businessman, and the childhood years of the future scientist were observed in observations of the struggle of his parents for the economic well -being of the family. This formed his attitude to the financial side of life and the conviction that the main goal of professional activity is a good salary. At least so he wrote to his mother in 1904 [1] . In general, his first steps in the profession distinguished much greater mercantile than the common image of a scientist - a disinterested minister of truth. And in the more mature years, when this “main goal” was achieved, he treated money seriously and, so to speak, with interest. Almost a third of his journey report to the USSR in 1945 [2] is devoted to observations that how much it is in Russia, who buys it (Langmur notes, for example, that “children buy ice cream for a portion on the street”), and how the country of advice pays the work of engineers and inventors.

But let's start in order. After graduating from Columbia University in 1903, young Langmur, as was customary in America at that time, was going to Germany to continue education. He enters the University of Gettingen, where he writes a doctoral dissertation. It is interesting that the head of the future Nobel laureate Langmur in Gettingen was the future Nobel Laureate Walter Nernst (1920), who in turn was a student of the future Nobel laureate Wilhelm Ostvostald (1909). Already being in Germany, Langmur chose between the laboratories of Ostvostild and Nernst. As it turned out, in any case, he would get to the Nobel laureate.

In 1906, Langmur defended his doctoral dissertation, and the problem of choosing work faces him. His elder brother Arthur, who held the position of chief chemist of the chemical company in New Yéorca, recommends Irving to start a career in commercial chemistry, which their mother agrees with, the opinion of which was very important for Langmur. Oddly enough, the academic aspirations of Langmur were supported by his other brother, Herbert, who was a successful insurance agent. He writes a letter to a young graduate student in Gettingen, in which he criticizes the all -consuming mercantilism of American society and says that Irving "betray himself if he selfishly devotes his life to personal enrichment."

Newly made PH.D. Returns to the United States and settles in the post of teacher of chemistry at the Stevensa Technological Institute in Hobokene, New Jersey. Moreover, he agrees to take this position only after the initial supply of $ 900 per year was increased to $ 1200 [2] . A large teaching burden is falling on Langmur - they did not particularly ceremony with unknown beginners: - In addition to teaching his courses, he assists in several courses of other professors. Despite employment at the institute, Langmur is looking for additional sources of income. At this time, he performs work for the municipality of New York, the Panama Canal Commission and even analyzes dynamite samples for a local chemical company (do not find similarities with the Russian teacher of the 2000s?).

After two years of work, Langmur decides that he costs the institute too cheap, and asks to increase his annual salary to $ 1440. The president of the institute rejects his petition, but Langmur insists and achieves that the dean of the chemical faculty of personal funds pays him a difference of $ 240! A year later, he again demands an increase in salaries, now until $ 1800, threatening otherwise with dismissal. Fortunately for us, Dean Pond replies to him that the young man is somewhat overestimating his significance for the faculty and that he is unlikely to find a job with a payment of more than $ 1300 per year. I don’t even want to think that the adsorption science would have lost if Stevens found funds for Langmur and numerous teaching duties and further prevented him from engaging in research. Indeed, for 3 years in Hobokene, Langmur has published only one low -value work.

On the advice of a classmate, who worked in a recently organized research laboratory of General Electric (GE), Langmur writes a letter to the laboratory of the laboratory of Willis Whitney with a request to accept him at a temporary rate for the summer of 1909. Langmur was hoping to find a well -paid professor by September, but the words of an experienced dean turned out to be true: the truth turned out to be true: it turned out to be true: Universities in America were in no hurry to accept a young man with two publications for their souls and modest teaching experience. Meanwhile, Whitney offers Irving a constant position in his laboratory. At first, Langmur was skeptical. In his mother’s letter, he reports that he does not expect salaries above $ 1400 annually. When he found out that the company’s proposal would be much more generous than his most daring expectations in the university sphere, he decided in winter and finally moved from Hoboken to Skenectadi, where the GE laboratory was located and where he worked the next 40 years.

The exact size of the initial salary of Langmur is unknown, but the general rule of Whitney was to offer young researchers 50% more than that universities could pay them. Whitney's leadership style was completely liberal. He suggested that Langmuur wander around the laboratory for several days, see what they were doing, and choose any problem that would seem interesting to him. Langmur chose the interaction of a tungsten thread with residual gases in a vacuum tube. The results of these studies compiled the first part of his Nobel lecture [3] .

Do not think that GE was a charitable organization for beginner scientists. The relationship of the Whitney and management of the company during this period was not the simplest. However, Whitney, who came to corporate science from the academic environment, from the famous Massachusetts Technological University, appreciated the advantages of free creativity and believed in its productivity. Dividends were not long in coming. Realizing that the cause of the rapid destruction of tungsten filaments is the evaporation of metal, the Langmur proposes to fill the lamp with inert gas to suppress this process. And to minimize unproductive heat losses, he proposed to turn off the tungsten wire into a spiral. Thus, the electric lamp received the usual look for us in which we buy it today in the store.

As we see, GE received from the Lang-Mur what I wanted-an improvement in the product. (The author does not even begin to calculate how much the companies were brought by the sale of gas -filled incandescent lamps, which GE produces for almost 100 years [4] .) For this, she needed to offer a good salary, equip the workplace and appoint a person like Willis Whitney, who was an active researcher and inventor. It seems to be nothing complicated!

But not only the company benefited from this cooperation. In the favorable atmosphere of Skenectadi, Langmur's performance increased repeatedly: in the first three years of work, he published 7 articles and submitted several applications for patents. In total, during his activities in GE, Langmur published more than 200 articles and patented 63 inventions.

Leonid Asin

Afterword

Between the author and the editorial office, the following conversation took place:

TRV: Is it possible to assume that for Langmur, science was only a way to earn money?

L.A.: It is unlikely. For example, 23 years after the events described, accepting congratulations about receiving the Nobel Prize at a banquet at the Swedish Academy of Sciences, he said: “The scientist is motivated mainly by curiosity and desire for truth. His attitude is more objectively than subjective. He finds great satisfaction in the discovery of new facts, but he gets even more pleasure from what he sees how his results are included in the structure of scientific knowledge <...> and are used by his colleagues for the further development of science [5] . " He did not say anything about the connection of motivation with the payment of the scientist. Perhaps at the solemn banquet there is no place for such statements. Or maybe there is no such connection.

[1] Hereinafter, the information about the correspondence and personal income of Langmur is given by; LS Reich, Technology and Culture, 1983. V. 24, No 2, pp. 199-221.

[2] I. Langmuir, The Scientific Monthly, 1946, V. 63, IS. 2, pp. 85-92.

[3] http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1932/langmuir-ldure.pdf

[4] In 1920, GE revenues from the sale of an electric lamps amounted to $ 19 million.

[5] http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1932/langmuir-speech.html