John T. E. Richardson was born in Overseal, England, in 1948. He grew up in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and studied at the Universities of Oxford (B.A. Hons. 1971) and Sussex (D.Phil. 1973). From 1975 to 2001, he taught psychology at Brunel University in the west of London, and in 2001 he took up a new chair in student learning and assessment at the UK Open University in Milton Keynes. He has written books on Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, mental imagery, closed head injuries and student learning. In 2002-2003, he was the president of the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences. He is an academician of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, a fellow of the British Psychological Society and a fellow of the Society for Research into Higher Education. His most recent book is a biography of Howard Andrew Knox, a US physician who developed early tests of intelligence while working in the immigration station at Ellis Island, New York.