Katharine Burr Blodgett, the first woman to become a General Electric (GE) scientist, made several significant contributions to the field of industrial chemistry. The inventor of invisible, or non-reflecting, glass, Blodgett spent nearly all of her professional life working in the Schenectady, New York, GE plant. Although Blodgett's name has little household recognition, some of the techniques in surface chemistry that she and her supervisor and mentor Irving Langmuir developed are still used in laboratories; in addition, Blodgett's invisible glass is used extensively in camera and optical equipment today.

Blodgett was born on January 10, 1898 in Schenectady, New York, the town in which she spent most of her life. Her parents had moved to Schenectady earlier in the decade from their native New England when Blodgett's father, George Bedington Blodgett, became the head of the patent department at the GE plant opening up in town. Blodgett never knew her...