Julie Langford

"Ryan's woman in Arcadia is an old betty named Langford. An okay sort, but not above doing a dirty job for a dollar."

- Atlas

Professor Julie Langford, Ph.D., was the scientist responsible for creating Arcadia, a garden and arboretum that supplied oxygen to most of Rapture.

History
Before her descent to the underwater city, Langford was a renowned botanist and professor at the University of California Berkeley campus, where she had worked since the 1920s. Her research attracted both praise for its groundbreaking findings, and controversy for her "radical theories". For a time she worked for the United States government, offering assistance with various defoliation projects during the Second World War, including an attack against the Japanese on Iwo Jima. An Audio Diary entry indicates that she has a daughter named Becky; what became of her child is unknown. Her disappearance after leaving for Rapture did not go unnoticed. A newspaper article dated to January 7th of 1949 commented that she was still missing at that date despite an “intensive investigation”.

Although truly loving the plants and her work on the garden of Arcadia she eventually allowed it to become a commodity, available only to paying visitors. Her greed eventually got the better of her again when she and Andrew Ryan decided to charge citizens for the vital oxygen created by the arboretum. The choice may not have been completely hers, if at all, as in a later Audio Diary she states that she would have complained but then remembered who signed her paychecks.

As the use of Plasmids caused society in Rapture to deteriorate, Langford seemed to remain oddly detached from the surrounding situation. She was busy using the scientific advances of ADAM in her work on the Lazarus Vector, a concoction that would be able to bring trees back from the dead. During this time Langford had trouble with the Saturnine, a group of Splicers who stole many of her materials for use in their nature worship cult. Near the end of the Rapture Civil War, when Ryan put the city into lock down, it seems that Langford was trapped in her office in Arcadia due to her refusal to leave while she was so close to a breakthrough in the formula.

BioShock
When Andrew Ryan released a chemical into the atmosphere that threatened to destroy the plant life in Arcadia, Jack, spurred on by Atlas, sought out Langford to see if she could help. When Jack finally reached Langford, Andrew Ryan flooded her office with a toxic gas, killing her, all the while reminding her about how he holds property rights to Arcadia and the manufacture of the Lazarus Vector. However, right before dying, Julie scrawls the combination to a safe on the window of her office. Inside the safe the player finds the recipe for the Lazarus Vector, a concoction invented by Langford that promises to revive the trees.

Audio Diaries

 * Arcadia
 * Arcadia Closed
 * The Saturnine
 * Early Tests Promising
 * What Won't They Steal
 * Teaching an Old Hound
 * Lazarus Vector Formula
 * The Lazarus Vector
 * Arcadia and Oxygen

Trivia

 * It is unclear what defoliation programs Langford would have worked on during WWII. Modern chemical defoliants were not used in warfare until the Vietnam war, meaning that Langford would have been working with items such as napalm or phosphorus bombs.
 * Julie's death may not have only been a consequence of breaking her contract, but as a way for Andrew Ryan to teach Jack a lesson about staying clear of his agenda in Rapture. This is evidenced by Ryan's statement directly after the Lazarus Vector is placed in the Misting Machine: "It seems Julie's death didn't provide a clear enough lesson to you. Perhaps this will suffice."
 * In BioShock 2 in the Poisoned Apple bar in the Siren Alley level there is a bottle of Chlorophyll Solution with the additional text on the label 'Property of Julie Langford' and 'Derived from Arcadia Plant subjects'. It is in under the front bar, directly beneath the cash register.
 * If the player tries to access Langford's lab before getting close to the Rapture Metro door and triggering the poison Langford will think that Jack is one of the Saturnine and refuse him entry.