This woman invented the solution to lens flare –you’ve probably never heard of her, but every photographer should thank her

2H33XET KATHARINE BURR BLODGETT (1898-1979) American chemist and physicist at the General Electric Research Laboratories in 1938.

Few women have had as big an impact on photography as Katharine Burr Blodgett – and I’m going to hazard a guess that you’ve never even heard of her. In all fairness, until recently, I hadn’t either, but every photographer on Earth owes Blodgett a debt of gratitude.Blodget (1898-1979) was an American physicist and chemist, and her co-invention of non-reflective glass changed photography forever. It’s hard to understate just how much of an impact her invention had, as its principles are still used in camera lenses today. In 1938, as an employee at General Electric, Blodgett and fellow researcher Irving Langmuir (1881-1957) refined a way of coating glass with a chemical layer that enabled 99% of light to pass through it. This significantly reduced unwanted glare and reflections, and the principle has been applied to camera lenses ever since. The chemical layer that the duo invented came to be known as Langmuir-Blodgett film – and it consisted of 44 single-molecule-thick layers of fatty acids derived from soap. While Langmuir invented the layer itself, Blodgett figured out how to control its thickness and apply it to glass.

Dr Irving Langmuir holds a pliotron, a type of vacuum tube he helped to invent in 1912-1913 (Image credit: Getty Images)

Just one year after its invention, Langmuir-Blodgett film was used in cinema for the first time on the production of the all-time classic Gone With the Wind. But it’s the wider use of Blodgett’s invention beyond photography and cinematography that truly highlights how groundbreaking it was. Just a few years later, during World War II, Langmuir-Blodgett film was used to coat submarine periscopes in the fight against the Nazis.

To this day, the anti-glare coatings on our camera lenses still rely on the findings of Langmuir and Blodgett. While modern non-reflective glass is typically coated in more durable materials, such as magnesium fluoride and silicone compounds, the original layer-by-layer, thin-film technique still underpins non-reflective glass.So, on behalf of everyone who’s picked up a camera since 1938, I say thank you to Katherine Blodgett (and Irving Langmuir).

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