John Murray

As a result of contacts made during my 3rd year dissertation, my research career began in 1967 at the Lunar research group at the University of London Observatory, where I worked on spacecraft images prior to and during the Apollo missions. A lifetime of similar work on other planets followed, with a succession of posts in France and the UK, working on space missions to Mercury, Mars and the outer planets, most recently as Co-investigator on the present European Mars Express mission.

In 1969 I received a request to survey the summit of Etna, and in 1975 set up a precise levelling network, subsequently measured once or twice a year, to detect ground deformation, followed by similar networks at other volcanoes in Mexico and central America. 10 days ago I returned from 6 weeks on Etna, my 79th such visit in 49 years, measuring 348 benchmarks with millimetric precision. I have been at the Open University since 1989, and my 96th paper, concerning the downslope movement of Mt Etna towards the sea, appeared in March.