Peter Richardson graduated from the University of Wales at Aberystwyth in 1976.
Having spent two years training as a biomedical scientist in the Haematology Laboratory of the Victoria Hospital, Worksop, in 1979 he was appointed as research technician to Dr Noel Ling, in the (at the time) newly-formed Dept. of Immunology at the University of Birmingham Medical School. This was a post-Doctoral project headed by Dr H.S.Dhaliwal using the (then) novel technology of monoclonal antibodies as a means of typing haematological malignancy.
This project came to the attention of the Head of Department Prof. Ian MacLennan who developed it into a formal Clinical Service to local Hospitals, and which, in time, became the nucleus of the Clinical Immunology Service as constituted today.