Peter Richardson applied his engineering expertise to the medical and biological sciences. In particular, he used his knowledge of fluid mechanics to design artificial lungs and a hybrid pancreas. Peter’s study of the interaction between blood flow and blood vessels advanced our understanding of atherosclerosis — the thickening of artery walls — and thrombosis, the formation of blood clots.
To complement his blood flow research, Peter developed the use of ultrasound to diagnose conditions in blood vessels. Peter’s non-biomedical contributions included studies of heat convection for the US Air Force and early computational work for NASA on the effects of radiative heat transfer on the lunar surface.