MA Hons (Well), DPhil (Oxf), FRAS.

Tom (born 1940) attended Wellington College, New Zealand, 1954-8 where he was closely involved with the observatory, developing new equipment and observing programmes. After graduating in philosophy (logic) at Victoria University of Wellington—with a good mixture of mathematics,  physics and philosophy of science — he did postgraduate research at Oxford University in formal logic, taught briefly at Auckland University, then moved to La Trobe University in Melbourne, where he became Associate Professor of Computer Science. In 1995 he founded with his sociologist wife Lyn a highly successful company, QSR International, to develop social science research software, from which he is now retired.

Tom was awarded the Murray Geddes Prize of the Royal Astronomical Society of NZ in 1959 and the Berenice Page Medal of the Astronomical Society of Australia in 2006, for his research work as an amateur astronomer. In January 2009 he was appointed Director of the Variable Star Section of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand, now renamed Variable Stars South. He is married with two adult children and lives with Lyn on a hilly pear orchard outside Melbourne with a kelpie, and of course the observatory.

About Tom Richards