Dickinson Woodruff Richards, Jr. was born in 1895 in Orange, New Jersey to Sally (Lambert) and Dickinson Woodruff Richards. Richards received his A.B. from Yale University in 1917, and three months later enlisted in the United States Army, After serving in France with the American Expeditionary Force during World War I, Richards entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia; there he completed his M.A. in physiology in 1922 and his M.D. in 1923. Richards immediately received his license to practice medicine. He spent his early career interning, conducting research, and studying experimental psychology. He then returned to Columbia University's Presbyterian Hospital to study pulmonary and circulatory physiology. In 1931 he married Constance Riley, a Wellesley College graduate who worked as a technician in his research lab at Presbyterian Hospital.

Richards' collaboration with André Cournand began in 1931 at Bellevue Hospital. Basing their research on Richards' concept "that lungs...