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Richard Julius Blandau was a researcher, professor of biological structure and administrator at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Blandau was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1911. After receiving an A.B. degree in biology and chemistry from Linfield College in 1935, he went on to earn a Ph.D. in 1939 from Brown University, and an M.D. degree in 1948 from the University of Rochester. Dr. Blandau served as a Fellow of the National Research Council at Yale University, and served on the medical faculty of Brown, Harvard University and the University of Rochester. He was recruited to join the original faculty of the UW School of Medicine. In 1949, Dr. Blandau became an associate professor in the Department of Anatomy (now called Biological Structure). He later served as an assistant dean of the medical school from 1955 to 1960 and as associate dean from 1960 to 1964.

While at the university, Dr. Blandau engaged in basic studies on ovulation, fertilization and embryonic development that led to advances in human fertility. He produced teaching and research films and pioneered time-lapse photography of mammal ovulation. His filmed documentation of how the egg is released from the ovary and guided into the oviduct won a Vienna Film Festival Award in 1959. He authored 138 articles and edited six textbooks. He was a president of the American Fertility Society, the American Association of Anatomists, and the Society for the Study of Reproduction. He received the Borden Research Award, the Ortho Research Award, the Barren Foundation Gold Medal, and was designated an Outstanding Teacher by the 1980 graduating class. He lectured around the globe, and was a member of many advisory groups, including the National Advisory Council on Child Health and Human Development, the World Health Organization Panel on Human Reproduction, the Population Crisis Committee, the NIH Advisory Committee on Population Affairs, and the International Childbirth Association. He was commissioned as a Kentucky Colonel in 1979 by the Governor of Kentucky. Blandau retired from the University of Washington in 1981 and died on May 11, 1998 in Seattle.