John Murray and the Oceanography.
John Murray - 1914). On March 3, 1841 pioneering Scottish oceanographer marine biologist and limnologist Sir John Murray was born. As one of its founders, coined the name oceanography. He studied ocean basins deep-sea deposits, and coral-reef formation. As a marine scientist he took part in the Challenger Expedition (the first major oceanographic expedition of the world. John Murray was born in Coburg, Ontario as the son of a Scottish emigrant. He left Canada at the age of 17, and attended Edinburgh University after finishing High School. He intended to study medicine but joined a whaler as a surgeon during a seven month journey to the Arctic. After his return, Murray began to study geology and zoology. He started working with Peter Guthrie Tait Professor of Natural Philosophy, who then recommended the young scientist to Wyville Thomson back then Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh . From 1872 to 1876 John Murray was part of the Challenger Expedition. The expedition was prompted by Charles Wyville Thomson and the. Royal Society of London. The crew sailed from Portsmouth, England and traveled about 70.000 nautical miles. As a result, the 'Report Of. The Scientific Results of the Exploring Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873-76' was published. It catalouged more than 4.000 species that were previously unknown. John Murray supervised the publication and described it as 'the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries'. . Fortunately, John Murray was, due to his participation in the Challenger Expedition forwarded collections from expeditions sent out from Norway Italy France Germany and the United States. In 1883 Murray set up the Edinburgh Marine Laboratory at Granton which was the first of its kind in Britain. In 1894 the laboratory was moved to Millport and became the Scottish Marine Station for work in the Clyde Sea area. The laboratory is known as the forerunner of the Scottish Marine Biological Association (SMBA) and the(SAMS). . For coining the term 'his advances in the field, and the dominance, the University of Edinburgh had retained through Murray in the field, he has widely been credited as the founder of modern oceanography. To his contributions to oceanography belongs the study of ocean depths from the Challenger Expedition. He made important attempts to construct from temperature and salinity observations a qualitative theory of water movement in the world's oceans and worked on the mapping of the marine deposits of the world's oceans. Further, John Murray investigated and experimented on the dissolution of calcium carbonate. He was the first who identified the carbonate compensation depth in oceans. In 1905 he published in a series of volumes the definitive work on freshwater Scottish lochs, which involved their hydrography bathymetry and sedimentology . At yovisto, you may learn more about oceans in a video titled 'Exploring the Ocean's Hidden Secrets' by Robert Ballard.