Jeremias Benjamin Richter

Born Mar. 10, 1762, in Hirschberg, Germany; died May 4, 1807, in Berlin. German chemist.

Richter graduated from the university in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) in 1789. He then worked as secretary and assayer at the mining administration in Breslau (now Wrocław). From 1798 to 1807 he was a chemist at a porcelain factory in Berlin. Richter studied the quantitative relationships in the neutralization of acids by bases, discovered the law of equivalents, and introduced the term “stoichiometry.” His results were published in the works The Principles of Stoichiometry, or the Art of Measuring Chemical Elements (vols. 1–3, 1792–94) and New Directions in Chemistry (fases. 1–11, 1791–1802). His investigations were instrumental in laying the basis for atomic theory in chemistry. Richter was a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences from 1800.