For 12 years he held positions at the NRC laboratories in Ottawa, Canada, making contributions to high power, ultrashort laser pulsed plasmas and the development of CO₂ lasers and their use in laser fusion studies. In 1980 he joined the University of Rochester where he worked for nine years as group leader for experiments for the then new 24-beam OMEGA system at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics.

Dr Richardson has held visiting scientific positions at the Institute for Laser Engineering (ILE) Osaka University, the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Germany, and other institutions in Australia, Canada, France and the former Soviet Union. He has published over 300 scientific articles in professional scientific journals, most on them on high power lasers and x-rays and their applications. He holds five patents, with several pending. He has chaired many international conferences including IQEC, ICHSP, and several SPIE meetings. He is a former Associate Editor of JQE, a recipient of the Schardin Medal, and a Fellow of OSA.