Background
Richardson, Owen Willans was born on April 26, 1879 in Dewsbury, England. Son of Joshua and Charlotte Maria (Willans) Richardson.
physicist university professor
Richardson, Owen Willans was born on April 26, 1879 in Dewsbury, England. Son of Joshua and Charlotte Maria (Willans) Richardson.
Bachelor of Arts, University of Cambridge, England, 1900, Master of Arts, 1904. Bachelor of Science, University of London, 1900, Doctor of Science, 1903. Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, 1902-1908.
After graduating in 1900, he began researching the emission of electricity from hot bodies at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, and in 1902 he was made a fellow at Trinity. In 1901, 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 corpuscles coming out of the metal, the saturation current s should obey the law." Richardson was professor at Princeton University from 1906 to 1913, and returned to the United Kingdom in 1914 to become Wheatstone Professor of Physics at King"s College London, where he was later made director of research.
He retired in 1944, and died in 1959.
He also researched the photoelectric effect, the gyromagnetic effect, the emission of electrons by chemical reactions, soft X-rays, and the spectrum of hydrogen. Richardson"s own sister married the American physicist (and 1937 Nobel laureate) Clinton Davisson, who was Richardson"s Doctor of Philosophy student at Princeton.
After Lilian"s death in 1945, he was remarried in 1948 to Henriette Rupp, a physicist. Owen Willans Richardson had a son Harold Owen Richardson who specialized in Nuclear Physics and was also the Chairman, Physics Department, Bedford College, London University and later on became emeritus Professor at London University.
Fellow Royal Society London, Cambridge Philosophical Society, Physical Society London. Member American Philosophical Society, American Physical Society, Society Francaise de Physique (council).
Married Lilian Maud Wilson, June 12, 1906.