744 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 192 8 



dom seen at scientific meetings because he found the necessary jour- 

 neys and the attendant excitement too much of a drain on his store 

 of nervous energy. 



It was not only as an investigator that Richards's influence was very 

 great. His teaching experience began while he was a graduate stu- 

 dent, when he served as a laboratory teaching assistant. In the sum- 

 mer of 1890 he taught elementary chemistry in the Harvard Summer 

 School and devised for the purpose a new inductive method of pre- 

 senting the subject. This method was later adopted by Harvard 

 University as the approved method of preparing for the entrance 

 examination in chemistry and exerted a profound influence on the 

 teaching of chemistry in secondary schools, especially in New Eng- 

 land. He taught quantitative analysis in Harvard College from 

 1889 to 1902. In the advanced course the lectures were largely de- 

 voted to the application of the most recent advances in physical 

 chemistry to analytical chemistry, an unusual thing at that time. In 

 1895 the death of Professor Cooke left the course in physical chem- 

 istry without a permanent instructor. Richards spent the late spring 

 and summer in Germany studying under Ostwald and Nernst, and in 

 the following year gave for the first time the advanced course in 

 physical chemistry with which he was associated during the re- 

 mainder of his life. This course dealt especially with the underly- 

 ing causes of phenomena without involving the student hopelessly in 

 mathematical details. Since the members of the course were largely 

 graduate students, in order to keep in touch with the undergraduates 

 Richards gave the whole or a part of a course in elementary physical 

 chemistry presented from a historical standpoint, a side of the sub- 

 ject which he considered of very great importance. Since he 

 possessed to a high degree the faculty of understanding the difficulties 

 of others and of presenting a subject in a simple and illuminating 

 way, these courses were always especially valued by both the students 

 and his colleagues. Fortunate as are those who have had the privilege 

 of hearing his lectures, even more so are those who were his collabo- 

 rators in research. His daily visits to the laboratories of his re- 

 search students invariably brought encouragement and inspiration, 

 either through his enthusiasm or by crucial suggestions. Satisfied 

 with nothing but the best, he aroused the students to new levels of 

 carefulness and thoroughness, at the same time insisting on a judicial 

 sense of proportion as to the essential and the nonessential. What 

 wonder therefore that not only American students came to Cambridge 

 for his instruction but also selected pupils from European institu- 

 tions, who were sent to his laboratory for special training in exact 

 jneasurements, a reversal of the old order ! Of these, Gilbert N. 

 Lewis in America and Otto Honigschmid in Germany are best known. 

 In 1907 he spent the second half year at the University of Berlin as 



