John Murray

For more than three decades, I have practiced as an entomologist. I was a member of the National Advisory Group on Lepidoptera Recording and Monitoring (Butterfly Conservation) 2001-2006. I am warden of Marshalls Heath Nature Reserve in Hertfordshire (1992-present). I have been a Butterfly Conservation Butterfly recorder for Herts & Middx Branch (1994-2009) and Butterfly Conservation Moth recorder for Herts & Middx Branch (2009-2022).

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. I have been at the Open University since 1989.