High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Richard Chace Tolman (March 4, 1881, West Newton, Massachusetts ? September 5, 1948, Pasadena) was an American mathematical physicist and physical chemist who was an authority on statistical mechanics. He also made important contributions to theoretical cosmology in the years soon after Einstein's discovery of general relativity. He was a professor of physical chemistry and mathematical physics at the California Institute of Technology. His brother was the behavioral psychologist Edward Chace Tolman. Richard studied chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1903 and Ph.D. In 1910.