AllMovie

Filmmaker Roger R. Summerhayes assembled this documentary about his grandfather, Irving Langmuir, a little-remembered scientific mind who was the first American industrial scientist to win the Nobel Prize. Possessing a keen intellect and iconoclastic outlook, Langmuir was a contemporary and acquaintance of Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison and Charles Lindbergh, and pioneered the field of "pure research" during his tenure at General Electric (his open-ended study into the behavior of gasses led to the invention of the modern incandescent light bulb). Langmuir's World also includes an interview with novelist Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who used Langmuir as the basis for the character of Felix Hoenikker in Cat's Cradle.