Robert Vose Langmuir Papers

Langmuir, Robert Vose (1912-1993) PHYSICIST, ELECTRICAL ENGINEER

Caltech Professor of Electrical Engineering, 1952-1980; Caltech Assistant Professor of Physics, 1950-1952; Caltech Senior Research Fellow, 1948-1950; Caltech alumnus (Ph.D., 1943).

Born December 20, 1912, in White Plains, New York, Langmuir received his A.B. from Harvard College in 1935. From 1939 to 1942, he worked for Consolidated Engineering Corporation of Pasadena on the development of the first commercial mass spectrometer. In 1942, he took a position with General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York, where he helped to develop CW magnetrons for jamming enemy radar during World War II. After the war, he invented another mass spectrometer, the omegatron, for which he was awarded the patent. With Pollock and Elder, he designed and constructed the first synchrotron to operate in the U.S., the 70 MeV. With this team, he was the co-discoverer in 1947 of synchrotron radiation and wrote the pioneering paper which provided experimental verification (Physical Review 74 (1948)). In 1948, Langmuir returned to Caltech to participate in the building of the 1.5 BeV synchrotron (1948-1960). At Caltech, he taught courses in electricity and magnetism, and in electronics, while conducting research in various topics in applied physics and engineering.