John Richardson (1740/41–1795), FAS of Wadham College, Oxford, was the editor of the first Persian-Arabic-English dictionary in 1778–1780.
[1] His seminal work on Persian grammar, written in collaboration with Sir William Jones, was noteworthy amongst the early works on this subject; and it remains significant in the context of that philological foundation from which all subsequent grammatical studies were to evolve.
[2] Richardson's scholarly compilation was organized in a format similar to Mesgnien-Meninski's Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalis, Turcicæ, Arabicæ, Persicæ (1680).
[1] Richardson's ground-breaking scholarship was more broadly disseminated in Charles Wilkins' several revised versions of the dictionary.
[3] Subsequent work by the 19th century philologists Francis Johnson, Francis Joseph Steingass and others ensured that Richardson's name continued to be well known as an orientalist and as a scholar.