Lewis Fry Richardson, 1881 - 1953

Abstract

Lewis Fry Richardson, D.Sc., F.R.S., who died quietly in his sleep, at Kilmun, Argyll, on 30 September 1953, had been a Fellow of the Society for 27 years and had contributed many papers to the Transactions and Proceedings. Richardson, born at Newcastle on Tyne on 11 October 1881, was the youngest child of David and Catherine Richardson who had a family of five boys and two girls. David Richardson was a tanner: the Richardsons had, in fact, been tanners for three hundred years. The story of the family is given in a book by A. O. Boyce, published in 1889 Records of a Quaker Family ; the Richardsons of Cleveland. Contemporary relatives of note were John Wigham Richardson, shipbuilder, a first cousin of David, and Henry Richardson Procter, F.R.S., Professor of Tanning at Leeds, a second cousin once removed (a third cousin of Lewis). Hugh Richardson, educationist and geographer, was Lewis’s elder brother; Sir Ralph Richardson, actor, his nephew. David Richardson’s mother, Sarah (née Balkwill) was the daughter of a pharmaceutical chemist in Plymouth and in her youth she got the nick-name ‘Sal volatile’ because she was gay. (As his father and grandfather both went south for their wives, it is, perhaps, not to be wondered at that Lewis did the same.)