Theodore William Richards, a professor of chemistry at Harvard University, was the first American chemist to receive a Nobel Prize. The prize was awarded to Richards in 1914 in chemistry for his accurate determination of the atomic weights of twenty-five chemical elements. He was renowned for his unsurpassed laboratory skill in chemical analysis. His work provided essential fundamental data for practical and theoretical chemists and physicists, and his graduate program at Harvard produced many eminent educators and research scientists.

Richards, the fifth of six children, was born on January 31, 1868, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, to William Trist Richards, a painter of seascapes, and Anna Matlack Richards, a writer and poet. Until he was fourteen, Richards received all his education from his mother, who had little regard for the public schools of Germantown. His interest in chemical experiments began when he was ten; when he was thirteen, he attended lectures in chemistry...