Martin Richardson gained the worlds first PhD in display holography from The Royal College of Art in 1988. In 1999 he was awarded the Millennium Fellowship by the UK Millennium Government Commission and in 2002 was awarded the prestigious Shearwater Foundation Award for Achievements in Holographic Art. He is currently Professor of Modern Holography at De Montfort University, Leicester, where he leads the Holographic Research Centre. In 2009 he achieved Associate Membership to the Royal Photographic Society and in 2009 was awarded the ‘Saxby medal’ for his contributions to 3-D imaging. He is a visiting Professor at the Kun-Shan University in the Graduate School of Visual Communication Design, Taiwan and is the Senior External Examiner at Newcastle College, Leeds Metropolitan University and The London College of Communication.
Martin is regarded as an imaging pioneer. He has made holograms of many famous people, including film directors Martin Scorsese and Alan Parker as well as the fine artist Sir Peter Blake and writer Will Self to name but a few. His work with rock star David Bowie, for a project using 3-D promotional material for the album ‘hours’, is well known and all of which has been documented in his first published book ‘Spacebomb: Holograms and Lenticular 1984 – 2004’. His second authored book, ‘The Prime Illusion: Modern Holography In The New Age Of Digital Media’ provides a theory that future design processes will need methods of three-dimensional print.