Richard W. Murray

Richard W. Murray, known as Rick Murray, an American geologist and oceanographer, is the Deputy Director and Vice President for Research at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Murray was previously a professor of earth and environment at Boston University (1992-2019), where he served as Chair of the Department of Earth Sciences (2000-2005), and Director of Boston University's Marine Program (2006-2009).

Murray also served as Director of the Division of Ocean Sciences at the National Science Foundation (2015-2018).

He then attended the University of California at Berkeley, receiving his Ph.D. in Geology in 1991, before accepting a post-doctoral fellowship at the Graduate School of Oceanography of the University of Rhode Island. He uses sedimentary evidence to study topics including volcanism, the dispersal of volcanic ash, climate change, and oceanographic processes in the subseafloor biosphere. A drill team extracts core samples by connecting continuous lengths of pipe that extend to the sea floor and then drilling down hundreds of meters into the Earth’s crust. The ship must stay fixed in its location for days or weeks to extract core samples. The oceanic sediments in a core sample can date back millions of years. Layers of sediment are examined for chemical and isotopic clues indicative of dust, pollen, volcanic ash, runoff from rivers, microbes, and plankton. In some cases, concentrations are measured in parts-per-trillion. Components of pore water such as the concentrations of metals and nutrients and alkalinity also provide clues to the climate and conditions in effect when a sediment layer was deposited. Oceanic core samples are eventually archived in long-term storage facilities at 4°C, available for further study of the geologic and climate record. He was Chief Science Officer on the last full research cruise of the R/V Knorr in 2014, taking core samples from the ocean floor of the North Atlantic.

Murray has published nearly 100 peer-reviewed research papers. He was elected a fellow of the Geological Society of America in 1999. He has held leadership positions in the Sea Education Association (SEA, trustee), American Geophysical Union (AGU, board of directors), and the Society for Women in Marine Science (SWMS, board member).

Murray was co-chair of the Subcommittee on Ocean Science and Technology for the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President under the Obama and Trump administrations. As of 2021, the National Science Foundation announced funding for a new Science and Technology Center at WHOI, the Center for Chemical Currencies of a Microbial Planet (C-CoMP), to study elemental transfer of molecules "within marine microbial communities and between the ocean and atmosphere". Murray is a member of the Committee on 2025-2035 Decadal Survey of Ocean Sciences for the National Science Foundation.