Theodore (William) Richards

Chemist, born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, USA. He was affiliated with Harvard from his graduate studies to his death (1885–1928). He had begun by trying to establish precisely the relation of the atomic weights of hydrogen and oxygen, and he devoted the first half of his career to correcting the errors in the accepted atomic weights of 21 elements. It was this work that won him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1914. He then turned his attention to thermochemistry and thermodynamics, producing not only immense amounts of new data, but also elucidating a number of fundamental properties and processes. Regarded as the foremost experimental chemist of his day, he remains important for establishing the modern era of accuracy in physico-chemical analysis.

He was educated at first by his mother, and traveled to England and France. Back at Harvard, he became an assistant in chemistry, then instructor, assistant professor, and finally full professor in 1901. In 1903 he became chairman of the Department of Chemistry at Harvard, and in 1912 he was appointed Erving Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Wolcott Gibbs Memorial Laboratory.

About half of his original work concerned atomic weights, starting in 1886 with work on oxygen and copper. He invented the nephelometer and by 1912 he had redetermined, with the highest accuracy, the atomic weights of over thirty important chemical elements and in later years he was to play his part, by his work on the determination of the atomic weight of isotopes, in the modern concept of the atom.

Professor Richards received honorary doctorates and honors from around the world, including the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1914.