Rate My Professor Michael Murphy

Professor Michael Murphy is Professor of Astrophysics in the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University of Technology. An observational astrophysicist, he specializes in cosmology, examining the Universe’s properties and evolution on the largest scales using quasar spectra, particularly absorption lines imprinted by distant galaxies. His research has made significant contributions to measuring fundamental constants of nature, such as the fine-structure constant, in the distant early Universe. He investigates galaxy formation and evolution, the role of the circumgalactic and intergalactic media in feeding galaxies over the Universe’s 14 billion year history, and ultra-precise astronomical spectroscopy, including the devising and development of astrocombs—laser frequency combs for measuring tiny effects in astronomical spectra.

Michael Murphy earned a BSc in Physics with Honours from the University of New South Wales in 1999 and a PhD in Astrophysics from the same institution in 2003, supervised by John Webb. Post-PhD, he held a Research Fellowship at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge (2003–2005), followed by a PPARC Advanced Fellowship (now STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship) until mid-2007. He joined Swinburne as Lecturer in mid-2007 and received an Australian Research Council QEII Fellowship (2008–2012). He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Physics (FAIP), Fellow of the Astronomical Society of Australia (FASA), and Member of the International Astronomical Union. Key publications include “Further evidence for cosmological evolution of the fine structure constant” (Physical Review Letters, 2001), “Search for time variation of the fine structure constant” (Physical Review Letters, 1999), “Indications of a spatial variation of the fine structure constant” (Physical Review Letters, 2011), and “High-precision wavelength calibration of astronomical spectrographs with laser frequency combs” (2007). In 2012, he co-received the Eureka Prize for Scientific Research for work on fundamental constants. Murphy has delivered public lectures such as “A Night at the Keck” and leads projects on quasar absorption and solar twin spectroscopy.