Roger Wolcott Richardson (30 May 1930 – 15 June 1993) was a mathematician noted for his work in representation theory and

geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...

. He was born in

Baton Rouge, Louisiana Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, it is the parish seat of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana's most populous parish—the equivalent of counties i ...

, and educated at

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 nea ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where he obtained a

Ph.D A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

. in 1958 under the supervision of

Hans Samelson Hans Samelson (3 March 1916 – 22 September 2005) was a German-American mathematician who worked in differential geometry, topology and the theory of Lie groups and Lie algebras—important in describing the symmetry of analytical structures. C ...

. After a postdoc appointment at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, he accepted a faculty position at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

. He emigrated to the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

in 1970, taking up a chair at

Durham University , mottoeng = Her foundations are upon the holy hills (Psalm 87:1) , established = (university status) , type = Public , academic_staff = 1,830 (2020) , administrative_staff = 2,640 (2018/19) , chancellor = Sir Thomas Allen , vice_chan ...

. In 1978 he moved to the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies and ...

Canberra Canberra ( ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...

, where he stayed as faculty until his death. Richardson's best known result states that if ''P'' is a parabolic subgroup of a reductive group, then ''P'' has a dense orbit on its nilradical, i.e., one whose closure is the whole space. This orbit is now universally known as the Richardson orbit.Gus I. Lehrer,
Roger Wolcott Richardson 1930–1993
', Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 11 Number 4 (1997)

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* *

Mathematical Reviews ''Mathematical Reviews'' is a journal published by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) that contains brief synopses, and in some cases evaluations, of many articles in mathematics, statistics, and theoretical computer science. The AMS also pu ...

br>analysis

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Richardson, Roger Wolcott 1930 births 1993 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians Algebraists Louisiana State University alumni Harvard University alumni University of Michigan alumni Australian mathematicians Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science People from Baton Rouge, Louisiana Mathematicians from Louisiana University of Washington faculty Princeton University people Academics of Durham University Academic staff of the Australian National University

Publications

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References