Theodore William Richards, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1928)

Theodore William Richards was an American physical chemist and the first American scientist to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, earning the award "in recognition of his exact determinations of the atomic weights of a large number of the chemical elements."

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine. This award is administered by the Nobel Foundation and awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on proposal of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, which consists of five members elected by the Academy. The award is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on December 10th, the anniversary of Nobel's death.