Richard Tolman (1881-1948) was an American physicist and chemist.
Starting in 1940, Tolman served as Vice-Chairman of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) and was also the Chairman of the Armor and Ordnance Division of the NDRC. He was in charge of the coordination of the massive scientific component of the United States war effort. Tolman was appointed as chief scientific adviser to General Leslie Groves, and his voice carried serious weight in Groves’ decisions about the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb. Before his death in 1948, Tolman worked as scientific adviser to the U.S. representative to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission.