With interests in astronomy, math, physics, botany, and philosophy, Richardson took an unconventional route to establishing a science career.

Meanwhile, she was able to enroll in plant taxonomy and evolution courses at Harvard that would later contribute to her big-picture approach to studying protein structure.

She subsequently rejoined the scientific world, working as a technician at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the same laboratory as her husband, David Richardson, whom she met at Swarthmore College.

[10] At MIT, David Richardson was pursuing his doctorate in Al Cotton's lab using X-ray crystallography to study the structure of staphylococcal nuclease.

By observing the position of Sputnik – at the time, the only artificial satellite – on two successive nights, she managed to calculate its predicted orbit.

[4] During her crystallographic studies, Jane Richardson had come to realize that a general classification scheme can be developed from the recurring structural motifs of the proteins.

[4] In the meantime, Jane and David Richardson had moved to Duke University in 1970, where they solved the first crystal structure of superoxide dismutase (2SOD).

Secondary structures result from hydrogen bond interactions between adjacent amino acids sequences to form alpha helices or beta-sheets.

[28] Additionally, they developed all-atom contact analysis (see image) to measure "goodness of fit" inside proteins and in interactions with surrounding molecules.

[4] The Kinemage website offers interactive exploration of various 3D protein structures through computer displays using their Mage or KiNG graphics programs.

[35][36] The laboratory has acted as assessors in the CASP8 structure-prediction experiment[37] (CASP),[38] is one of the four developer teams on the PHENIX software system[39] for x-ray crystallography of macromolecules, and hosts the MolProbity web service[40] for validation and accuracy improvement of protein and RNA crystal structures.