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John Murdoch
1852–1925
A Harvard-trained zoologist who turned firsthand Arctic fieldwork into lasting scientific writing, he is best remembered for documenting life at Point Barrow, Alaska. His work sits at the crossroads of natural history, ethnography, and the early history of American museums and libraries.
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About the author
Born in 1852, John Murdoch trained as a zoologist at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. He taught zoology for a year at the University of Wisconsin, then served from 1881 to 1883 as a naturalist on the International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska.
That experience shaped the work he is most known for: detailed studies of the people, environment, and material culture of northern Alaska, including Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition. His writing is still noted for the breadth of its observation, bringing together natural history and ethnography in a way that helped preserve an important record of Arctic life in the late nineteenth century.
Later in his career, he worked as librarian of the Smithsonian Institution from 1887 to 1892 and then as an assistant cataloger at the Boston Public Library, where he remained until 1923. He died in 1925, leaving behind a body of work valued by historians of science, Arctic studies, and anthropology.