Owen Willans Richardson (April 26, 1879 - February 15, 1959) was a British physicist, and was a professor at Princeton University from 1906 to 1913. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1900.
He was awarded the Hughes medal by the Royal Society (of which he was a Fellow) in 1920 for his work in thermionics, which is the basis for the vacuum tube.
He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1928 "for his work on the thermionic phenomenon and especially for the discovery of the law named after him".
He also researched the photoelectric effect, the gyromagnetic effect , the emission of electrons by chemical reactions, soft X-rays, and the spectrum of hydrogen.
His nephew was physicist Richard Davisson.
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