Dr. Anna Balazs Named 2014 ACS Langmuir Lecturer
McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Anna Balazs, PhD, 
the Robert v. d. Luft Distinguished Professor in Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, has been named the 2014 American Chemical Society (ACS) Langmuir Lecturer.
The Langmuir Lecture is quite distinguished and was first presented in 1979. The Lecturers are chosen from the international scientific community based on their outstanding research, publications, and creativity in the interdisciplinary field of Colloid and Surface Chemistry.
Dr. Balazs will deliver a plenary lecture in a special session of the Colloid and Surface Chemistry Division program, presented in the 2014 Fall ACS Meeting to be held in Indianapolis, Indiana.
About the Langmuir Lecture:
Irving Langmuir (31 January 1881 – 16 August 1957) was an American chemist and physicist. His most noted publication was the famous 1919 article, “The Arrangement of Electrons in Atoms and Molecules,” in which, building on Gilbert N. Lewis’s cubical atom theory and Walther Kossel’s chemical bonding theory, he outlined his “concentric theory of atomic structure.” Langmuir became embroiled in a priority dispute with Lewis over this work; Langmuir’s presentation skills were largely responsible for the popularization of the theory, although the credit for the theory itself belongs mostly to Lewis.
While at General Electric from 1909-1950, Langmuir advanced several basic fields of physics and chemistry, invented the gas-filled incandescent lamp, the hydrogen welding technique, and was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in surface chemistry. He was the first industrial chemist to become a Nobel laureate. The American Chemical Society Journal for Surface Science is named Langmuir in his honor.
