Alfred Newton Richards

Professor Alfred Newton Richards (March 22, 1876 - March 24, 1966) was an American pharmacologist. Richards was born in Stamford, New York, in the family of Rev. Leonard E. Richards and his wife Mary Elizabeth Burbank. He was educated at Stamford Seminary and at the Free Union School. Then he studied at Yale. From 1910 to 1946, he served as chairman of the Department of Pharmacology, Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, and from 1939 to 1948, he was vice president of medical affairs at the university. In 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Richards as chairman of the medical research committee. After this post was terminated in 1946, Richards became president of the National Academy of Sciences, serving until 1950. In 1948, President Harry Truman appointed Richards to the Medical Task Force of the Executive Board of the Government; Richards also became director of Merck & Co., with whom he had consulted since 1931, and associate trustee of the University of Pennsylvania in 1948.