Robert Murphy: Mathematician and Physicist - End of a Legacy

The End of a Legacy

Murphy’s years of alcohol abuse took a toll on his health. In 1843, he contracted tuberculosis of the lungs [Barry 1999] and he died soon after, on March 12, 1843. It was shortly after Murphy’s death that De Morgan made the claim about his genius with which we opened this biography: “He had a true genius for mathematical invention” [Venn 2009]. Murphy was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, London, where “[t]he grave has no headstone nor landing stone nor surround. It is totally unmarked” [Barry 1999, p. 173].

We end this biographical journey with Murphy’s obituary, which appeared in The Gentleman’s Magazine:

March 12. The Rev. Robert Murphy, M.A. Fellow of Gonville and Caius college, Cambridge, and Examiner in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at University College, London. He took his degree of B.A. in 1829; and was the author of “Elementary Principles of the Theories of Electricity, Heat, and Molecular Actions” [Urban 1843, p. 545].

Figure 7. Likeness of Robert Murphy (ca. 1829). (Source: Permission granted by the Master and Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge)