Richard McLean Badger (original) (raw)

Richard McLean Badger (4 May 1896 – 26 November 1974) was an American professor at Caltech and a chemist who specialized in molecular spectroscopy with X rays and infrared radiation. He made pioneering studies on the modes of vibrations and spectral energies in small molecules. The so called Badger's rule relating force and internuclear distance in diatomic molecules is based on his work from 1933. Badger married Virginia Alice Sherman in 1933 and they had a son and a daughter. The Badger family home in Brisbane is now heritage-listed.