Paul Richards's important, elegant, and thorough contributions to theoretical seismology, in topics ranging through seismic wave propagation in inhomogeneous media, full‐wave theories, and seismic source theory, have made him eminently qualified to receive the Macelwane Award.Paul received his B.A. degree in mathematics from Cambridge in 1965 and his Ph.D. from Cal Tech in 1970. His thesis topic concerned high‐frequency wave propagation and the shadow of the earth's core. He spent a year as a research geophysicist at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, UCSD, where he extended his work on the theory of wave propagation and wrote a paper on the pressure wave radiation from ocean bottom earthquakes. He became assistant professor at Lamont‐Doherty Geological Observatory in 1971 and associate professor in 1976. He was a Sloan Foundation research fellow from 1973 to 1976. Since 1973 he has been American Editor of the Geophysical Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society.