Sir John Larkins Cheese Richardson (4 August 1810 – 6 December 1878) was a 19th-century New Zealand politician, and a cabinet minister.

His father was Robert Richardson, a civil servant of the East India Company who ran a silk factory.

Richardson received his education at the Company's Military Seminary in Addiscombe, Surrey, England.

Richardson worked with Learmonth White Dalrymple to establish a girls' high school in Dunedin, and for women to be admitted as students of the University of Otago.

Richardson's granddaughter, Josephine Gordon Rich, studied with Thomas Jefferson Parker at the university, and published a scientific paper, but does not appear in student lists, probably because her home-schooling made her ineligible to enrol.