Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Murray, John
MURRAY, Sir JOHN (1841–1914), marine naturalist and oceanographer, born at Cobourg, Ontario, 3 March 1841, was the second son of Robert Murray, an accountant who had left Scotland in 1834 and settled in Upper Canada, by his wife, Elizabeth Macfarlane. John was for a time at the public school of London, Ontario, and later at Victoria College, Cobourg. At the age of seventeen he left Canada and came to Scotland to complete his education under the care of his maternal grandfather, John Macfarlane, of Coney Hill, Stirlingshire. Murray attended the high school at Stirling and afterwards studied in the university of Edinburgh, on the roll of which his name appears for the years 1864–1865 and 1868–1872. He did not pursue any regular course but attended classes in those subjects which appealed to him. He never took examinations and did not graduate. He found particularly congenial conditions in the natural philosophy laboratory, and there during at least three years he spent much time under the direction of Peter Guthrie Tait [q.v.] on experimental work, e.g. on thermal conductivity and on the construction of an electrical deep-sea thermometer. In 1868 Murray shipped as surgeon on the whaler Jan Mayen. He left Peterhead in February and during his seven months' voyage in northern seas reached a latitude of 81° N., explored part of Spitzbergen, and landed on Jan Mayen Island. He brought back a collection of marine organisms and also records of observations on currents, on the temperature of the air and of the sea, and on the distribution of sea ice. He added to his experience by marine work off the west coast of Scotland during the next two years.
1871 and 1872 were years of exceptional scientific activity in Edinburgh owing to the organization of the equipment for the Challenger expedition. The government had resolved to send this ship round the world for the purpose of scientific exploration of the ocean, and (Sir) Charles Wyville Thomson [q.v.], professor of natural history in the university of Edinburgh, was appointed director of the scientific staff. Murray took a considerable share in the preparation of the scientific apparatus; and when a vacancy on the staff unexpectedly arose he was appointed, almost at the last moment, one of the naturalists, and this led to the great work of his life. During the voyage—which lasted nearly three and a half years—the physical, chemical, geological, and biological conditions of the great ocean basins were investigated, special attention being given to the greater depths, about which little was then known. Murray devoted himself particularly to the observation of the surface organisms, especially the Foraminifera and Radiolaria, and to the study of the samples of the deposits brought up from the ocean floor, and he demonstrated the part played by the surface organisms in forming certain of the deep-sea deposits. He also took much interest in the instruments used in obtaining samples of the sea bottom, and devised improved apparatus for sounding and for registering the temperature at great depths. Thomson put Murray in charge of the collections—unrivalled in their range and importance—made during the expedition. Shortly after the return, the ‘Challenger Office’ was opened at 32 Queen Street, Edinburgh, for dealing with the collections, and for nearly twenty years this was the place to which marine biologists from all over the world came to inspect the new organisms and to discuss the results gathered by the expedition. Murray was appointed chief assistant in the office and, owing to the failing health of Sir Wyville Thomson, became mainly responsible for organizing the working out of the collections. In 1882, after Thomson's death, Murray became director of the office and editor of the Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger (1880–1895). This Report, in fifty royal quarto volumes, was the work of experts of many lands, who at the conclusion of their labours expressed their sense of the great services rendered by Murray, and there is no doubt that it was owing to the forcefulness of his character that this remarkable series of memoirs was completed within twenty years of the return of the expedition. During the later years of this period Murray's task was made difficult by an unsympathetic Treasury, and he spent a large amount of his own money in completing the publication.
For several of these years Murray was engaged, with his friend, Professor A. F. Renard, of Ghent, on the study of the marine deposits, and in 1891 appeared their report on Deep Sea Deposits, still the standard work of reference, notable alike for its detail and its clear generalizations. As a consequence of this work, samples of deposits obtained by surveying ships and by various expeditions were sent to Murray, and a unique collection was thus brought together. Another result of Murray's observations during the expedition was his well-known paper On the Structure and Origin of Coral Reefs and Islands (Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. x, 1880), in which he dissented from Darwin's view that the form of atolls was due to subsidence of the land forming the foundation of the reef. Murray put forward the view that submarine elevations were built upwards by deposition on their summits of the skeletons of pelagic organisms and other sediments, and that when they reached a height favourable for the growth of any coral polyps which became established upon them, coral plantations were formed. He held that as these approached the surface of the sea they would assume the atoll form owing to the more abundant supply of food and more vigorous growth on the outer margin, and to the removal of dead coral from the interior portion by currents and by solution. Murray's work was stimulating, and, although his explanation of the formation of atoll lagoons is not generally accepted by recent authorities, his conclusions on other points, e.g. the importance of submarine planation, have proved to be sound. Murray was joint author of the Narrative of the Cruise of H.M.S. Challenger (1885), and he drew up the last two volumes of the Report (1895), which form an impressive summary of the results of the expedition.
In 1880 and 1882 Murray engaged, with Captain T. H. Tizard, in exploring the Faroe Channel in the government surveying ships Knight Errant and Triton. He established small marine laboratories at Granton and at Millport, and the latter has developed into the Scottish Marine Biological Association. Murray's steam yacht, the Medusa, built and equipped for marine biological work, enabled him with the help of several younger colleagues to bring together during the years 1884–1892 a large number of records, published in 1918 by his former secretary, J. Chumley, under the title The Fauna of the Clyde Sea Area.
As soon as the Challenger work was out of his hands, Murray undertook a bathymetrical survey of the fresh-water lochs of Scotland. Supported by the councils of the Royal Societies of London and of Edinburgh, he had urged the government to undertake this survey, but without avail. In 1897 with his capable young collaborator, Frederick Pullar, he began the work, and several important papers on the results had appeared, when in 1901 Pullar was drowned while attempting to save the lives of others. His father—Laurence Pullar, Murray's oldest friend—determined that the survey should be continued, and provided funds for a staff of assistants; they began work in 1902 and carried on the investigations until 1909. Some 60,000 soundings were made in 562 lochs, and the records of these and of other scientific results, forming an admirable survey, were published in six volumes by Murray and Pullar in 1910.
When the Challenger office was closed (May 1895), Murray bought a house near his residence to serve as a library and laboratory. Here were arranged the series of oceanic deposits, until in 1921, with the greater part of his library, they were removed to the British Museum (Natural History); here also were the head-quarters of the Lake Survey. To this centre came many investigators whom Murray inspired and assisted out of the fullness of his experience.
As the result of his detection of phosphate of lime in rock specimens brought in 1887 from Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean, Murray urged the annexation of the island, which took place the next year. In 1891 Murray and G. Clunies Ross, of the Cocos Islands, obtained a lease of Christmas Island, and in 1897 they formed a small company to develop its valuable resources. Murray also paid the expenses of two scientific expeditions to the island in 1897–1898 and in 1908, as the result of which Dr. C. W. Andrews, of the British Museum (Natural History), brought home extensive collections. A Monograph of Christmas Island (1900), which embodies the results of the first expedition, is important as forming a record of the indigenous fauna and flora of an isolated tropical island before these had become affected by the animals and plants introduced by man. Murray himself made two exploring visits (1900, 1908) to the island. He used to say that the Treasury had received from the island in the form of rents, royalties, and taxes a sum which exceeded the cost of the Challenger expedition and the publication of its results.
In 1909 Murray visited Copenhagen and urged upon the international council for the exploration of the sea the need for systematic observations in the north Atlantic. Later he made an offer to defray all other expenses of a four months' expedition on condition that the Norwegian government lent the Michael Sars and her scientific staff for the purpose. The offer was accepted, and in April 1910 this vessel of 226 tons left Plymouth with Murray on board and with Dr. Johan Hjort as leader of the staff. The immediate results of this expedition—including important physical and biological observations at all depths in the tracts traversed—were published in The Depths of the Sea by Murray and Hjort in 1912. A description of 1,426 samples of deposits from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, gathered during thirty-five cruising expeditions between 1857 and 1911, was being prepared under Murray's supervision at the time of his death. This work was completed by J. Chumley, who added a discussion of the results, and the monograph was published (1924) in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Murray received honorary degrees from several universities, was elected F.R.S. in 1896, and created K.C.B. in 1898. He acted for nearly two years (1896–1898) as scientific member of the Scottish Fishery Board, and filled various offices in the scientific societies of Edinburgh. His recreations were yachting—during which he carried on soundings, dredging, and other observations—golf, and motoring. He was killed in a motor accident at Kirkliston, near Edinburgh, 16 March 1914.
Murray married in 1889 Isabel, only daughter of Thomas Henderson, shipowner, of Glasgow; there were two sons and three daughters of the marriage.
Edward Forbes [q.v.] was the pioneer of shallow-water dredging during the earlier half of the nineteenth century; the exploration of the deep sea we owe largely to Wyville Thomson and Murray. Murray has left an enduring mark on the science of oceanography which he brought practically to its present position and outlook. He was an original, suggestive, broad-minded thinker and did not hesitate to attack established views if they did not coincide with his conclusions. A strong and forceful personality, he was confident of his own opinion and somewhat brusque, occasionally domineering, in manner, but full of good humour, and most helpful and friendly to his assistants and to other investigators who sought his aid.
Portraits of Murray were painted by Sir Daniel Macnee in 1876 and by Sir George Reid in 1912.
[Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. xxxv, 1915 (with list of publications); Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, vol. lxxxix, B, 1915–1916; personal knowledge.]