Richard McLean Badger (4 May 1896 – 26 November 1974) was an American professor at Caltech and a chemist who specialized in molecular spectroscopy with X rays and infrared radiation.
The so called Badger's rule relating force and internuclear distance in diatomic molecules is based on his work from 1933.
Badger was born in Elgin, Illinois to Joseph Stillman who worked at General Electric, and Carrie Mabel Hewitt.
He joined Northwestern University in 1916 but was posted into the US Army 311st Field Station Battalion in World War I and was demobilized in 1919.
He studied crystals using X ray diffraction and was influenced by Richard C. Tolman, Roscoe G. Dickinson, Paul S. Epstein, and Arthur A. Noyes.