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Irving Langmuir
1881–1957 · United States · Born in the 1800s
Nobel Chemistry 1932
Pioneered surface chemistry, including adsorption and molecular monolayers, and refined the octet rule for chemical bonding.
Nobel Prize work
The 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recognized his discoveries in surface chemistry. He showed that gases adsorb on solids in monomolecular layers, quantified adsorption with the Langmuir isotherm , and analyzed reactions on filaments and liquid films — work that founded the modern science of surfaces and heterogeneous catalysis.