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Charles Francis Richter (; April 26, 1900September 30, 1985) was an American seismology and physicist. He is the namesake and one of the creators of the Richter scale, which, until the development of the moment magnitude scale in 1979, was widely used to quantify the size of . Inspired by Kiyoo Wadati's 1928 paper on shallow and deep earthquakes, Richter first used the scale in 1935 after developing it in collaboration with Beno Gutenberg; both worked at the California Institute of Technology.
At this point, he became fascinated with seismology (the study of earthquakes and the waves they produce in the earth). Thereafter, he worked at the new Seismological Laboratory in Pasadena, under the direction of Beno Gutenberg. In 1932, Richter and Gutenberg developed a standard scale to measure the relative sizes of earthquake sources, called the Richter scale. In 1937, he returned to the California Institute of Technology, where he spent the rest of his career, eventually becoming professor of seismology in 1952. "I wasn't supposed to do routine work on earthquakes,'' he recalled in an interview years later. ''But someone had to find out where they originated and how big they were, so I did it."
The pair designed a seismograph that measured this displacement and developed a logarithmic scale to measure intensity. The name "magnitude" for this measurement came from Richter's childhood interest in astronomy – astronomers measure the intensity of in magnitudes. Gutenberg's contribution was substantial, but his aversion to interviews contributed to his name being left off the scale. After the publication of the proposed scale in 1935, seismologists quickly adopted it for use in measuring the intensity of earthquakes.
Richter remained at the Carnegie Institution until 1936, when he obtained a post at the California Institute of Technology, where Beno Gutenberg worked. Gutenberg and Richter published Seismicity of the Earth in 1941. Its revised edition, published in 1954, is considered a standard reference in the field.
Richter became a full professor at the California Institute of Technology in 1952. In 1958, he published Elementary Seismology based on his undergraduate teaching notes. As Richter seldom published in scientific journals, that is often considered his most important contribution to seismology. Richter spent 1959 and 1960 in Japan as a Fulbright scholar. Around this time in his career, he became involved in earthquake engineering through development of for earthquake prone areas. The city government of Los Angeles removed many ornaments and from municipal buildings in the 1960s as a result of Richter's awareness campaigns.
When the 1971 San Fernando earthquake started, "he jumped up screaming and scared the cat" said Richter's wife. He had retired in 1970 but had not stopped working. San Fernando praised Richter's warnings for preventing many deaths.
The scale developed by Richter and Gutenberg (which became known by Richter's name only) was instead an absolute measure of an earthquake's intensity. Richter used a seismograph, an instrument generally consisting of a constantly unwinding roll of paper, anchored to a fixed place, and a pendulum or magnet suspended with a marking device above the roll, to record actual earth motion during an earthquake. The scale takes into account the instrument's distance from the epicenter, or the point on the ground that is directly above the earthquake's origin.
Richter chose to use the term "magnitude" to describe an earthquake's strength because of his early interest in astronomy; stargazers use the word to describe the brightness of stars. Gutenberg suggested that the scale be logarithmic so an earthquake of magnitude 7 would be ten times stronger than a 6, a hundred times stronger than a 5, and a thousand times stronger than a 4. (The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that shook San Francisco was magnitude 6.9.) The quote " are a device of the devil" is attributed to Richter.
The Richter scale was published in 1935 and immediately became the standard measure of earthquake intensity. Richter did not seem concerned that Gutenberg's name was not included at first; but in later years, after Gutenberg was already dead, Richter began to insist for his colleague to be recognized for expanding the scale to apply to earthquakes all over the globe, not just in southern California. Since 1935, several other magnitude scales have been developed.
At his retirement party, a group of Caltech colleagues performed an original earthquake-themed ballad called "The Richter Scale" which began: "Charlie Richter made a scale, for calibrating earthquakes. Gives the true and lucid reading, every time the earth shakes." Richter was remembered as receiving the song poorly and calling it an insult to science. Richter eventually came around to the song, reported its lyricist J. Kent Clark in a 1989 interview. Even after his official retirement from Caltech, Richter continued to study seismographic data in his laboratory daily.
Richter died of congestive heart failure on September 30, 1985, in Pasadena, California. He is buried in Altadena, California's Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum.
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