A spectroscopic method to determine thickness of quartz wave plate is presented. The method is based on chromatic polarization interferometry. With the polarization-resolved transmission spectrum (PRTS) curve, the phase retardation of quartz wave plate can be determined at a wide spectral range from 200 to 2000 nm obviously. Through accurate judgment of extreme points of PRTS curve at long-wave band, the physical thickness of quartz wave plates can be obtained exactly. We give a measuring example and the error analysis. It is found that the measuring precision of thickness is mainly determined by the spectral resolution of spectrometer.