Physics alumnus creates the Martin Richardson PhD Fund to support postgraduates

A generous donation by alumnus Professor Martin Richardson, who completed his BSc in Physics in 1964, will help support stipends for PhD candidates.

The endowed fund, established by a donation from Imperial alumnus Professor Martin Richardson, provides the Department of Physics with the means to top up PhD stipends and support recipients for the duration of their studies. 

The fund will help the Department continue to attract the very best PhD candidates to study at Imperial in the future. 

The inaugural recipient, Max Hutt, has just completed his first year of studies in the Theoretical Physics Group. 

Professor Richardson is the Director of the Centre for Directed Energy at the University of Central Florida. He first joined Imperial as an undergraduate in 1964, before receiving his PhD from London University in 1966.

Devoting his career to researching photonics and laser energetics, Professor Richardson said that his undergraduate studies in Imperial shaped his future professional career by exposing him to the foremost physicists at the time, such as Lord Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, who won the Nobel Prize in 1948. 

Professor Richardson also recalls formative experiences such as a visit from Prime Minister Wilson: “I started to see how science impacted the broader world, and I wouldn’t have seen that in many other universities that I gained entrance to at the time.”

“The things I experienced at Imperial contributed my intention to go on to do a PhD, which wasn’t a natural decision for most students, especially one from my family background where we didn’t have university graduates,” he said. 

I honestly can’t overestimate the impact of the scholarship on my life Max Hutt PhD student, Department of Physics

The scholarship’s first recipient, Max, will be completing his PhD in the formalisation of mathematics used in quantum field theory. He completed his BSc and Master’s degree in Physics at the University of Oxford.

“I honestly can’t overestimate the impact of the scholarship on my life,” Max said, “The modern era is an expensive one, and I’m very lucky to be able to have access to better resources and a more stable living situation as a result.”