Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/427

 gift of being able to inspire his subordinates with intense and affectionate loyalty.

Murray was twice married: first, in 1875 to Arabella (died 1909), daughter of W. Bray, by whom he had two sons and three daughters; secondly, in 1913 to Fanny, daughter of James Scott Robson, and widow of Sir Donald H. Macfarlane.

 MURRAY, 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 401