The Atlas Ricardi was created by Richard Penry Ambler who carried out most of his research at the University of Edinburgh's Department of Molecular Biology. It is a compilation of all of the amino acid sequence results produced over the course of his career.

The imporatance of the Atlas Ricardi as a resource of protein sequences in bacteria is that without them it is impossible to distinguish the evolutionary relationships of different species of bacteria as they are morphologically the same and not present in the fossil record. This information also allowed Ambler to study penicillan resistance in bacteria.