Before joining Microsoft, he spent 34 years at the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton[9].

[5][3][10] Richardson was educated at St George’s Roman Catholic School, Southampton and Taunton’s College.

[11] 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.

[11] His work extends to fibres capable of delivering kilowatts of optical power for manufacturing with lasers.

[11] “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) This article incorporates text available under the CC BY 4.0 license.