Geological Chronicle
Richardson is an ancient lunar impact crater spanning 162.56 kilometers in diameter on the Moon's far side, located just behind the eastern limb. Dating from the Pre-Nectarian period, the crater lies south of the walled plain Harkhebi and east-southeast of Vestine, with Szilard to the northeast and Artamonov to the southeast.
A substantial portion of the crater is overlain by Maxwell, which lies across the southwestern rim. The northeastern rim of Maxwell reaches the approximate midpoint of Richardson, and together with its outer rampart covers nearly half the interior floor. The remainder of the rim is worn and eroded, with Richardson W intruding into the northwestern rim and Richardson E lying along the eastern side.
The surviving interior floor is relatively level, marked with a number of small craterlets. Both the rim and floor are covered by wispy deposits from the Giordano Bruno impact, located just to the north-northeast.
Prior to formal naming in 1979 by the International Astronomical Union, the crater was known as Crater 114. The IAU officially adopted the name Richardson in 1979 in recognition of Owen Willans Richardson, the British physicist and 1928 Nobel laureate who investigated thermionic emission.