Abstract
THE many friends of Dr. Irving Langmuir will note with pleasure that he has just been elected a foreign member of the Royal Society. It will be remembered (see NATURE, p. 768, Nov. 19, 1932) that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1932. In referring to this award, it was pointed out that it is to Irving Langmuir that we owe the conception of the orientated monolayer as the state of material at phase boundaries. A clear and simple interpretation was found for many of the phenomena occurring at interfaces, and new light was thrown on such varied subjects as thermionics, heterogeneous catalysis and surface tension. More recently, Langmuir has been investigating the stability of oil lenses on water as determined by the nature of the monolayer of the interface, a problem with many biological implications. In addition, as the late Sir William IJardy first observed, the orientated monolayer on a metal surface plays an important function in lubrication. During the last two years, Langmuir has also made the important discovery that these layers are destroyed by the passage of a rubbing surface, but if the film be made thick enough, self-repair is effected. Finally, with his co-workers, Langmuir has been investigating the conditions of mobility of substances adsorbed in monolayers on metal substrates, one of the factors to be considered when the rates of catalytic actions are under review.
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Dr. Irving Langmuir, For.Mem.R.S.. Nature 136, 14 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136014b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136014b0
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