What did charles richter invent

American physicist and seismologist Charles Francis Richter is best known for developing the Richter magnitude scale, which was used to measure earthquake size until the moment themagnitude scale was developed in 1979.

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Key Facts & Information

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION

• On April 26, 1900, in the small Ohio village of Overpeck, Fred W. Kinsinger and Lillian Anna Richter welcomed their son Charles Francis Richter into the world. 
• His parents d
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  Charles Richter

  Seismologist and physicist (born 1900)

  Charles Francis Richter (; April 26, 1900 – September 30, 1985) was an American seismologist 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 earthquakes. 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.

  Childhood and education

  Richter was born in Overpeck, Ohio.^[1] Richter had German heritage: his great-grandfather was a Forty-Eighter, coming from Baden-Baden (today in Baden-Württemberg, Germany) in 1848 in the wake of the German revolutions of 1848–1849.^[2] Richter's parents Frederick William and Lillian Anna (Kinsinger) Richter, were divorced when he was very young. He grew up with his maternal grandfather, who moved the family (including his mother) to Los Angeles in

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  Charles Richter Biography

  Charles Richter was a physicist and seismologist who created a system of measuring earthquake magnitudes now known as the Richter Scale. Raised first in Ohio and then in southern California, Richter graduated with a degree in physics from Stanford University in 1920, and earned his doctorate from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1928. He worked at Caltech’s Seismological Laboratory between 1927 and 1935, and collaborated with Beno Gutenberg on a scale that interpreted seismograph readings to measure the magnitude of earthquakes. The Richter Scale (a term he did not use himself) was publicized in 1935 and was specific to southern California, but was applied soon after to worldwide seismological events and became the scientific standard. Charles Richter was a professor of seismology at Caltech from 1937 to 1970, then spent the rest of his career as a consultant.

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