Theodore William Richards (redirected from Theodore W. Richards)

Richards, Theodore William 

Born Jan. 31, 1868, in Germantown, Pa.; died Apr. 2, 1928, in Cambridge, Mass. American chemist.

Richards became a professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., in 1901. In the years 1888–1923, he made an extremely precise determination, using a method which he himself had devised, of the atomic weights of 25 elements. In 1902 he experimentally corroborated Faraday’s laws. In 1913 he discovered that the atomic weight of the Pb obtained from uranium ores differs from that of the Pb obtained from thorium ores. This difference was one of the first demonstrations of the existence of isotopes. Richards was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1914.

WORKS

Determinations of Atomic Weights of Silver, Lithium and Chlorine. Washington, D.C., 1910. (With H. H. Willard.)

REFERENCE

Hartley, H. “Theodore William Richards Memorial Lecture.” Journal of the Chemical Society, 1930, part 2, pp. 1937–69.