Series 93 - Roger Wolcott Richardson papers

Professor Roger Wolcott Richardson was born on 30 May 1930 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He graduated with the degree of BSc, majoring in physics, from Louisiana State University in 1951 and was then conscripted into the US Air Force. In 1958 he completed his PhD studies in geometry and topology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and accepted an Instructorship at Princeton University, 1958-1960. He was Assistant Professor, University of Washington, Seattle 1960-1963, Associate Professor 1963-1967, Professor 1967-1972, Professor of Mathematics, University of Durham, UK 1972-1977. In 1977 he was appointed a Professorial Fellow in Mathematics at the Australian National University and in 1992, Chair in Mathematics. Richardson died on 17 June 1993.

The Department of Mathematics, was established in the Research School of Physical Sciences by the University Council in 1959 on the initiative of Director, Sir Mark Oliphant. The foundation head was Professor Bernhard Hermann Neumann, 1962-1975. Early chair holders were Professor J W Miles, 1962-1965 and Professor Kurt Mahler, 1963-1968; Professor Robert Edmund Edwards, 1970-1986. In 1989 it became part of the School of Mathematical Sciences, which was renamed the Mathematical Sciences Institute in 2002.