Owen Richardson

Owen Willans Richardson (1879–1959) was a British physicist who studied thermionic emission and the photoelectric effect. He received the 1928 Nobel Prize in Physics for work on thermionic phenomena.

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Thermionic emission: The release of electrons from a material when it is heated. Richardson’s investigations of electron emission from hot bodies formed the basis of his Nobel-recognized work.
J. J. Thomson: English physicist who discovered the electron and led the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. Thomson supervised Richardson’s doctoral research at Cambridge.
Vacuum tube: An electronic device that controls electric current through electrodes in an evacuated enclosure. Heated cathodes use thermionic emission, the phenomenon Richardson characterized.
Nobel Prize in Physics: An annual international award recognizing major contributions to physics. Richardson received the 1928 prize for his work on thermionic phenomena and, especially, the discovery of the law named after him.
Richardson–Dushman equation: An equation describing thermionic current density as a function of temperature and a material’s work function. It gives quantitative form to the temperature dependence Richardson established experimentally.
H. A. Wilson: British physicist known for research on electrical conduction and the ionization of gases. Wilson worked with Richardson on early experiments involving electricity and heated bodies.
Cathode ray tube: A vacuum tube that forms images by directing an electron beam onto a phosphorescent screen. Its electron gun relies on emission from a heated cathode.
Richardson law: The relation stating that thermionic emission current rises rapidly with the absolute temperature of a heated surface. The law distilled Richardson’s experimental findings into a general description of emission.
Work function: The minimum energy needed to remove an electron from a solid’s surface. This surface-energy barrier helps determine the thermionic current described by Richardson’s law.
Walter Nernst: German physical chemist whose work on thermodynamics included the heat theorem known as Nernst’s theorem. Richardson held a research position in Nernst’s laboratory in Berlin after Cambridge.