Owen Richardson

Sir Owen Willans Richardson (26 April 1879 – 15 February 1959) was a British physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1928 for his work on thermionic emission and for the discovery of Richardson's law.<ref name=Nobel1928>Template:Cite web</ref>

Biography

Education

Owen Willans Richardson was born on 26 April 1879 in Dewsbury, England, the son of Joshua Henry Richardson and Charlotte Maria Willans. He was educated at Batley Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained First Class Honours in Natural Science in 1900 and was elected a Fellow in 1902.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He obtained a D.Sc. from University College London in 1904.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Career and research

In 1900, Richardson began researching the emission of electricity from hot bodies in the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. The following year, he demonstrated that the current from a heated wire seemed to depend exponentially on the temperature of the wire with a mathematical form similar to the Arrhenius equation. This became known as Richardson's law: "If then the negative radiation is due to the electrons coming out of the metal, the saturation current s should obey the law <math>s = A\,T^{1/2}\,e^{-b/T}</math>."<ref>O. W. Richardson (1901) "On the negative radiation from hot platinum," Philosophical of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 11 : 286–295; see especially p. 287.</ref>

In 1906, Richardson was appointed Professor of Physics at Princeton University, a position he held until 1913. The following year, he returned to England to become Wheatstone Professor of Physics at King's College London, where he was later made Director of Research in 1924.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 1927, he was one of the participants of the fifth Solvay Conference on Physics that took place at the International Solvay Institute for Physics in Belgium. He retired from King’s College in 1944.

Richardson also researched the photoelectric effect,<ref>Template:Citation</ref> the gyromagnetic effect, the emission of electrons by chemical reactions,<ref>Template:Citation</ref> soft X-rays, and the spectrum of hydrogen.

Richardson died on 15 February 1959 in Alton at the age of 79. He is buried in Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey.

Family

In 1906, Richardson married Lilian Maud Wilson, the sister of his Cavendish colleague, Harold Albert Wilson. They had two sons and a daughter.

Richardson had two sisters: Elizabeth Mary Dixon Richardson, who married the prominent mathematician Oswald Veblen; and Charlotte Sara Richardson, who married the American physicist (and 1937 Nobel laureate in Physics) Clinton Davisson, who was Richardson's Ph.D. student at Princeton. After Lilian's death in 1945, he was remarried in 1948 to Henriette Rupp, a physicist.

Richardson had a son, Harold Owen Richardson, who specialised in nuclear physics and was also the chairman of the Physics Department at Bedford College, London University, and later on became emeritus professor at London University.Template:Cite needed

Recognition

Memberships

Country	Year	Institute	Type	Template:Reference column heading
Template:Flag	1910	American Philosophical Society	International Member	<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Template:Flagdeco United Kingdom	1913	Royal Society	Fellow	<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Awards

Country	Year	Institute	Award	Citation	Template:Reference column heading
Template:Flagdeco United Kingdom	1920	Royal Society	Hughes Medal	"For his work in experimental physics, and especially thermionics"	<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Template:Flag	1928	Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences	Nobel Prize in Physics	"For his work on the thermionic phenomenon and especially for the discovery of the law named after him"	<ref name=Nobel1928 />
Template:Flag	1930	Royal Society	Royal Medal	"For his work on thermionics and spectroscopy"	<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Chivalric titles

Country	Year	Monarch	Title	Template:Reference column heading
Template:Flag	1939	George VI	Knight Bachelor	<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref>

Works

• The emission of electricity from hot bodies (1st edition, 1916)
• The emission of electricity from hot bodies (2nd edition, 1921)

• Title page to The emission of electricity from hot bodies (1916)
  Title page to The emission of electricity from hot bodies (1916)
• Preface to The emission of electricity from hot bodies (1916)
  Preface to The emission of electricity from hot bodies (1916)
• Table of contents to The emission of electricity from hot bodies (1916)
  Table of contents to The emission of electricity from hot bodies (1916)
• First page to The emission of electricity from hot bodies (1916)
  First page to The emission of electricity from hot bodies (1916)

External links

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• Template:Nobelprize