David Richardson (physicist)

David John Richardson FRS FREng[5] (born 1964) is a Professor and Deputy Director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton.[2][4][6]

David Richardson FRS FREng
David Richardson at the Royal Society admissions day in London, July 2018
Born	David John Richardson 1964 (age 55–56)[1]
Education	Taunton’s College
Alma mater	University of Sussex (BSc, PhD)[2][3]
Awards	Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (2013)
Scientific career
Fields	Photonics[4] Optical Fibers[4] Optical communications[4] Lasers[4] Nonlinear optics[4]
Institutions	University of Southampton
Thesis	The production of, and experiments with, monochromatic ultra cold neutrons (1989)
Website	www.orc.soton.ac.uk/people/djr1

Education

Richardson was educated at St George’s Roman Catholic School, Southampton and Taunton’s College.[1] He completed his Bachelor of Science degree and PhD in Physics at the University of Sussex in 1989.[3]

Career and research

Richardson is a pioneer in the field of photonics, best known for his work on fibre optics and their applications.[5] He has played a leading role in developing techniques to scale the data-carrying capacity of future optical communication networks to keep up with society's demand for ever increasing internet bandwidth.[5] He has developed optical fibres of high performance – capable, for example, of transmitting large quantities of data across the internet at high speed.[5]

Richardson was also one of the first to demonstrate the potential of compact, flexible, pulsed fibre lasers operating over a broad range of powers, pulse durations and wavelengths.[5] Over many years he has extended the performance limits of fibre lasers, making them strong contenders to conventional lasers and contributing to their commercial success.[5] His work extends to fibres capable of delivering kilowatts of optical power for manufacturing with lasers.[5]

References

1. Anon (2019). "Richardson, Prof. David John". Who's Who. ukwhoswho.com (online Oxford University Press ed.). A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc. (subscription or UK public library membership required) (subscription required)
2. "Professor David Richardson - Optoelectronics Research Centre - University of Southampton". www.orc.soton.ac.uk.
3. Richardson, David John (1989). The production of, and experiments with, monochromatic ultra cold neutrons. jisc.ac.uk (Thesis). University of Sussex. Copac 42677383.
4. David Richardson publications indexed by Google Scholar
5. Anon (2018). "Professor David Richardson FREng FRS". London: Royal Society. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:

   “All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” --Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies at the Wayback Machine (archived 2016-11-11)

6. Richardson, D. J.; Nilsson, J.; Clarkson, W. A. (2010). "High power fiber lasers: current status and future perspectives [Invited]". Journal of the Optical Society of America B. 27 (11): B63. doi:10.1364/JOSAB.27.000B63. ISSN 0740-3224.

 This article incorporates text available under the CC BY 4.0 license.