William Graham Richards (1 October 1939 – 11 February 2025) was an English chemist and Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. He served as head of the department of chemistry at the University of Oxford from 1997 to 2006. Richards was a pioneer in the field of computer-aided molecular design, in particular its application to the pharmaceuticals industry. He was the founding scientist of Oxford Molecular Ltd., and introduced a novel model for the funding of research at Oxford University, which has been copied elsewhere. Richards was one of the scientific co-founders of Oxford Molecular Limited (OMG). The company developed software for modelling of small molecules and proteins, and drug design. Benefiting from the economic and legal changes, the company was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1992, making the university £10 million. The company was worth £450 million at its peak but was eventually sold for £70 million. Richards published more than 300 scientific papers, including 15 books.
Education Graham Richards was born on 1 October 1939 in Hoylake, England, to Percy Richards and Gwendoline Julia Richards (née Evans). Both parents were of Welsh extraction. Richards was educated at Birkenhead School. He won a scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford, starting his studies there in 1958. He received his bachelor's degree in Chemistry with first class honours from the University of Oxford in 1961. He then studied the electronic spectroscopy of diatomic molecules with Richard F. Barrow, earning his Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Oxford in 1964.
Career and research After his DPhil, Richards continued his spectroscopic work with fellowships in Oxford (ICI Research Fellowship, Junior Research Fellowship at Balliol College) and Paris, France (Centre de Mécanique Ondulatoire Appliquée). He soon returned to Oxford as a research fellow at Balliol College, Oxford (1964–1966), before being elected to a Fellowship in Chemistry at Brasenose College (1966–2007), his alma mater. He was promoted to a lecturer at Oxford University (1966–1994), to reader (1994–1996), and to professor (1996–2007). He served as chairman of the chemistry department from 1997 to 2006. Richards celebrated his formal retirement from the University of Oxford on 18 May 2007.
Industry involvement In the fourth year of his degree course Richards' research project led him to using Oxford's Ferranti Mercury computer to solve integrals. During a fellowship year in France at Centre de Mécanique Ondulatoire Appliquée, he was able to use more powerful computers. Returning to Oxford, he worked on ab initio computations and applied computational techniques to solving quantum mechanical problems in theoretical chemistry, in particular studying spin-orbit coupling. His influential paper Third age of quantum chemistry (1979) marked the development of computational techniques for theoretical analysis whose precision equaled or surpassed experimental results.
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