Willis R. Whitney

Willis Rodney Whitney was an American chemist, born in 1868 in Jamestown, New York and died January 9, 1958 in Schenectady, New York, known as the father of American industrial research for founding the General Electric Company's research laboratory in 1900, one of the first corporate research laboratories in the United States. Under his direction as its first head, the laboratory developed in 1907 the tungsten filament incandescent lamp, replacing the far less efficient carbon filament lamps then in use, and in 1913 introduced the gas-filled Mazda C lamp, which used argon gas inside the bulb to slow filament evaporation and further improve efficiency and lifespan, advances that became standard across the electric lighting industry. Whitney led the General Electric Research Laboratory from 1900 to 1928 and served afterward as the company's vice president in charge of research until 1941, and over his career he received the Willard Gibbs Medal, the Franklin Medal, the Perkin Medal, the Edison Medal, the John Fritz Medal and the Chandler Medal.