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At 69, he is a stocky man of middle height with plentiful white hair and an air of semi-polite skepticism. But he can also blaze with indignation and laugh like a kid—all within a few minutes. In the presence of his gentle-voiced, humorous wife, he smiles like a man who is happy. His interests are more versatile than those of many scientists: he has been known to sit for half an hour beside a rock surrounded by rising water just to see what a dozen ants will do when their refuge is submerged.*
On his present project in New Mexico he now spends most of his time with his eyes fixed on the hot summer skies, watching for new clouds to conquer. He has teamed up with Dr. E. J. Workman, president of the New Mexico School of Mines, who has begun a new series of experiments, studying the electrical habits of thunderstorms.
So far neither Langmuir nor Workman is overanxious to publish their latest results. Both feel that too much silver iodide is being sprayed around the Southwest these days. It might be just as well to leave matters as they are for a while before western clouds are overseeded or the chemicals drift to the east and cause too much rain.
The Desert Maiden. In front of the new white laboratory of Workman's New Mexico School of Mines in Socorro stands a brick-red statue of an ethereal young girl holding a bird at her bosom. The students call her "the desert maiden," but Dr. Workman says she is Santa Rita, "Patron Saint of the Impossible," and just the right patroness for a physics lab.
Santa Rita used to be in Albuquerque, where her bird was thought to be a dove. Now that she has moved to Socorro and the rainmaking studies are going full blast around her, it has been noticed that her bird looks more like a duck. It holds its head back on its shoulders in a way doves seldom do. Dr. Workman considers this apparent metamorphosis a favorable omen.
Langmuir laughs and says: "We'll have to wait and see." With his radars and pocket thermometer, his optimism and his energy, he hopes to make ducks & drakes, some day soon, of New Mexico's perennial drought.
*No state as yet has a law to regulate rainmaking; Colorado is considering one.
*In the end, they drown.