The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1914
Theodore W. Richards
Theodore William Richards
was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, USA on January 31, 1868.
His father, William T. Richards was a well-known painter of
landscapes and seascapes: his mother, Anna, née
Matlack, won fame for her poetical works.
During his childhood, Richards travelled to England and France
and, up to the age of fourteen, he was educated by his mother. In
1883 he entered Haverford College, Pennsylvania, to graduate in
science in 1885 and enter Harvard University. He received the degrees,
B.A. in 1886; M.A. and Ph.D. in 1888. The following twelve months
were spent in Germany where he studied under Victor Meyer, P.
Jannasch, G. Kruss and W. Hempel; on his return to Harvard he was
appointed Assistant in Chemistry. He successively became
Instructor (1891), Assistant Professor (1894) and Professor
(1901); in 1901 he also declined an offer of a full professorship
in the University of Göttingen. 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 Richards' original work has concerned atomic
weights, starting in 1886 with work on oxygen and copper. He
quickly developed a new technique for the determination of halide
ratios and did much towards improving methods of weighing. He
invented the nephelometer and demonstrated the insidious effect
of occluded moisture in gases and solids. By 1912 he had
redetermined, with the highest accuracy, the atomic weights of
over thirty important 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. During his
initial work he was guided by J.P. Cooke.
Richards also studied atomic and molecular volume and he
formulated a hypothesis of compressible atoms. He carried out a
series of measurements of compressibilities of many elements and
compounds in support of his theory, developing, applying and
testing new methods and techniques. He introduced the use of
transition temperatures of pure hydrated salts as fixed points in
the standardization of thermometers, and the fundamentals of
adiabatic calorimetry were developed under his guidance. His
researches are recorded in some three hundred technical papers
published mainly in the Proceedings of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, the Journal of the American Chemical
Society and the publications of the Carnegie Institution of
Washington.
Professor Richards received honorary doctorate degrees in science
from Yale
(1905), Harvard (1910), Cambridge, Oxford and Manchester (1911) and Princeton (1923); in philosophy from Prague (1909)
and Christiania (1911); in law from Haverton (1908), Pittsburgh
(1915) and Pennsylvania (1920); in chemistry from Clark (1909);
and in medicine from Berlin (1910). He was President of the
American Chemical Society (1914), the American Association for
the Advancement of Science (1917) and the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences (1919-21). He received the Davy Medal (Royal
Society), 1910; the Faraday Medal, 1911, and Willard Gibbs Medal
(American Chemical Society), 1912; the Franklin Medal (Franklin
Institute), 1916; and the Le Blanc and Lavoisier Medal in 1922.
He was appointed Officier de la Lègion d'Honneur in 1925 and
he held fellowships or memberships of academies and learned
societies in the United States, the British Isles, France,
Germany and Scandinavia.
Richards married Miriam Stuart Thayer, daughter of Professor
Joseph H. Thayer, in 1896; they had one daughter and two sons.
His favourite recreations were sketching, golf and sailing.
He died at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 2, 1928.
From Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1966
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1914
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