Owen Willans Richardson (April 26, 1879 - February 15, 1959) was a physicist living in Britain, and was a professor at Princeton from 1906 to 1913. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1900.

He was awarded the Hughes medal by the Royal Society (of which he was a Fellow) in 1920 for his work in thermionics, which is the basis for the vacuum tube.

He received the Nobel prize in 1928 "for his work on the thermionic phenomenon and especially for the discovery of the law named after him".

He also researched photoelectric effects, the gyromagnetic effect, the emission of electrons by chemical reactions, soft X-rays, and the spectrum of hydrogen.

His nephew was physicist Richard Davisson.

See also

• Richardson's constant

External links

• A biography by the Nobel Foundation (http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/1928/richardson-bio.html)
• Owen Richardson's Nobel lecture on thermionics, December 12, 1929 (http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/1928/richardson-lecture.pdf)

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