Theodore William Richards became the first American to win a Nobel Prize in chemistry, awarded in 1914 for his meticulous determination of atomic weights of chemical elements while working at Harvard University. His techniques improved measurement precision by eliminating statistical noise and systematic errors in weighing atoms. Through this work he found that the same element could exist in forms with slightly different masses, an early observation of what would later be understood as isotopes, though the existence of neutrons was not yet known.
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Richards began publishing his atomic weight investigations in 1897, well before winning the Nobel Prize.
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The mass differences between forms of the same element were later explained by extra neutrons, a concept unknown to Richards at the time.
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30:28meticulous determination of atomic weights and the discovery of isotopes. Yes. Um this is the first Nobel Prize in chemistry for America. >> We're on the board. >> Yeah, we're on the board in chemistry. Theodore William Richards, he began um publishing these investigations into the exact atomic weights of chemical elements at Harvard University. Harvard is also on the board now. Um his groundbreaking techniques were groundbreaking because they eliminated statistical noise and systematic errors. You can imagine, right? You're trying to measure the mass of single atoms, >> right? >> Right. >> It's going to be hard. It's going to be
31:08hard >> in 1897. >> Yeah. This is this is not your this is not your dad's chemistry. >> Yeah. And this is this is where he sort of figured out that actually the same element can have two forms that have different masses with one slightly more heavy than the other. And it turns out we didn't know about neutrons and protons at the time. Turns out that's because they have an extra neutron. But he won the Nobel Prize in 1947 1914 in chemistry.