Robert Hallowell Richards was born on August 26, 1844, in Gardiner, Maine.

He was an American mining engineer, inventor, metallurgist, educator, and author. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1868. Upon graduation, he stayed at MIT as an instructor, advancing to the rank of professor in 1884 and serving as Department Head of Mining and Metallurgy for 41 years from 1873 to his retirement in 1914. The laboratories which he established at the Institute were the first of their kind in the world. Richards invented a jet aspirator for chemical and physical labs and a prism for stadia surveying. He also invented separators for Lake Superior copper, Virginia iron, and three for ores of the Western United States. Richards served as president of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in 1886. He was a member of the United States Assay Commission in 1897 and attained prominence as a legal expert in chemical and metallurgical cases. He was the author of more than 100 monographs and articles, but his most notable work is a monumental treatise, Ore Dressing (4 vols., 1903–09). He also published a Text Book of Ore Dressing (1909).

In 1875, he married Ellen Henriette Swallow (1842–1911), the first woman graduate of MIT, and in 1912, he married Lillian Jameson (1866-1924). He died on March 27, 1945, in Worcester County, Massachusetts.