John Murray

Murray, John

(1741–1815) Universalist clergyman; born in Alton, England. The son of strict Calvinist parents, he emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1770 and for two years was an itinerant evangelist preaching a decidedly non-Calvinist doctrine of universal salvation. Considered the founder of Universalism in America, he held pastorates in Gloucester, Mass., and Boston. He suffered a paralytic stroke in 1809 and passed the last years of his life as an invalid.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Murray, John

 

Born Mar. 3, 1841, in Cobourg, Canada; died Mar. 16, 1914, in Kirkliston, Scotland. British oceanographer and naturalist. Corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1897).

Murray was a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. In 1872 he was a naturalist on the British ship Challenger on its around-the-world expedition headed by Charles Wyville Thomson. Murray edited the 50 volumes that constituted the expedition’s findings; he also wrote sections describing the voyage and deep-sea deposits. In 1880 and 1882 he explored Faeroe Channel. In 1906 he conducted a bathymetric survey of the freshwater lakes of Scotland. In 1910, Murray and the Norwegian scientist J. Hjort organized an oceanographic expedition to the northern Atlantic. Two years later, Murray and Hjort wrote The Depths of the Oceans.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.