Owen W. Richardson is best known for his work in thermionics, the emission of electrons from a heated surface, and specifically for the law that describes that phenomenon, now called Richardson's law. For his work on thermionics, Richardson was awarded the 1928 Nobel Prize in physics. In addition, Richardson's investigations into gyromagnetics led to his theory that a body's magnetism is caused by the movement of its electrons, a phenomenon known as the Richardson-Einstein-de Haas effect.

Owen Willans Richardson was born in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, England, on April 26, 1879. He was the eldest of three children born to Joshua Henry and Charlotte Maria Willans Richardson. Young Owen was a precocious boy and, according to William Wilson in Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, "gained so many scholarships and exhibitions that his education cost his parents nothing at all." Richard entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1897. He earned first-class honors in...