Professor Richard Dendy graduated in Physics (Class I) from Merton College, Oxford University. After completing Part III of the Mathematical Tripos at Peterhouse, Cambridge University, he returned to Oxford where he obtained his doctorate in theoretical plasma physics supervised by the late Dirk ter Haar. In 1983, he joined the staff of the nuclear fusion research programme at Culham in Oxfordshire, working for the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority in conjunction with Euratom. He led Theoretical Plasma Physics there 1995-2011, retiring from UKAEA in 2022.

In 1997, Richard’s association with Warwick University began with his appointment as Honorary Professor of Physics. A series of research projects in collaboration with Professor Sandra Chapman’s growing Space and Astrophysics Group led in 2006 to the formation of Warwick University’s Centre for Fusion, Space and Astrophysics (CFSA) within the Physics Department, with substantial financial support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and close links to UKAEA Culham. Richard joined the Warwick faculty as a professor in 2012, and Sandra and Richard are joint Directors of CFSA.

Richard has supervised two dozen PhD students, the great majority of whom now hold staff positions as plasma researchers in national laboratories and universities. He has published 200 refereed journal articles, written a textbook "Plasma Dynamics" (O.U.P) and edited "Plasma Physics: An Introductory Course" (C.U.P.).

In addition to his research work at Warwick and Culham, Richard was Editor-in-Chief of the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion from 2005 to 2022. He has served on an Advisory Council of the Ministry of Defence 2005-2015; on the Physical Sciences Strategy Advisory Team of EPSRC; on the Science Board of the Institute of Physics; and on the selection panel for the first two annual rounds of the UK Blavatnik Awards.

Between 2010 and 2016 Richard served as a Commissioner of the body that oversees the Marshall Scholarships programme for outstanding US postgraduate students in the UK, funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

In 2011 Richard was appointed Honorary Professor of Physics at Kyushu University in Japan, working in the Itoh Turbulence Center. Also in 2011, he was appointed to the Physics Panel of the REF 2014 UK-wide university research quality evaluation programme. He also served on the successor, REF 2021.

Having been elected Chair of the Plasma Physics Division of the European Physical Society in 2016, Richard was re-elected in 2020 and stepped down in 2022. Here his roles included links to the American Physical Society, and he chaired the committee that selected the inaugural winner of the APS-EPS Landau-Spitzer Prize.