Martyl Langsdorf

Martyl Suzanne Schweig Langsdorf (St. Louis, Missouri, March 16, 1917 – Schaumburg, Illinois, March 26, 2013) was an American painter best known for creating the Doomsday Clock image for the June 1947 cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The commission tied her work to public debate about nuclear risk in the early postwar years.

Daughter of the painter Aimee Schweig and the photographer Martin Schweig, she took painting classes with her mother at the Provincetown Art Colony and later at the Ste. Genevieve Art Colony. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis. In 1942 she married the nuclear physicist Alexander Langsdorf, who worked on the Manhattan Project and helped found the Bulletin in 1945.

Martyl judged that a clock set at seven minutes to midnight would convey a sense of urgency, with midnight standing for an apocalyptic end. Beyond that cover, her career centred on abstract landscapes and large murals, among them Wheat Workers, commissioned by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts for a post office in Russell, Kansas. Her work is held by collections including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

In 1953 the couple moved into the house and studio designed by Paul Schweikher in Schaumburg, where she lived and worked until her death. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.