Theodore William Richards (January 31, 1868–April 2, 1928) was 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."

Theodore Richards was born in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to William Trost Richards. Pennsylvania in 1883, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in 1885. He then enrolled at Harvard University and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1886, as further preparation for graduate studies. Richards continued on at Harvard, obtaining a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1888 for a determination of the atomic weight of oxygen relative to hydrogen. 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 new Wolcott Gibbs Memorial Laboratory. He died at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 2, 1928, at the age of 60.