Person

Murphy, Robert Kenneth (1887 - 1972)

Born
29 July 1887
Newark, New Jersey, United States of America
Died
31 May 1972
North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation
Chemist and Chemical engineer

Summary

Robert Murphy was appointed Lecturer-in-charge of Chemistry and Head of the Science Department at the Sydney Technical College in 1915 where he established the first full professional Diploma course in Chemical Engineering in Australia. In 1951 he became part of the staff of the School of Chemical Engineering at the New South Wales University of Technology. Murphy was a founder of Australian Welding Institute, of which he was federal and New South Wales Secretary for many years, retiring in 1960.

Skip to

Details

Chronology

1917
Career position - Foundation Member, Australian Chemical Institute
1928 - 1952
Career position - Member of Committee, New South Wales Branch, Australian Chemical Institute
1934 - 1935
Career position - President, New South Wales Branch, Australian Chemical Institute
1935 - 1936
Career position - President, Australian Chemical Institute
1936
Life event - Naturalised as an Australian citizen
1945 - 1972
Award - Fellow, Australian Chemical Institute
1949 - 1952
Career position - Member of Council, New South Wales University of Technology
1950 - 1951
Career position - Principal, Sydney Technical College
1951
Life event - Retired

Related Awards

Related Corporate Bodies

Archival resources

Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science

  • Neville Albert Whiffen - Records, 1939 - 1999, MS 187; Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science. Details

Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, University of Melbourne

  • Interview with Dr. R. K. Murphy - father of chemical engineering in Australia, 1964; Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, University of Melbourne. Details

National Library of Australia Oral History Collection

  • Robert Kenneth Murphy - Records, 1890 - 1966, DeB 176; National Library of Australia Oral History Collection. Details

Published resources

Book Sections

Journal Articles

  • 'Obituaries: Francis Lovell Ward (1905-1972); Robert Kenneth Murphy (1887-1972)', Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, 39 (8) (1972), 234-236. Details
  • Coyle, R., 'R K Murphy, Dr.Ing (Darmstadt) - pioneer of chemical engineering education in Australia', Chemical Engineering in Australia, ChE15 (2) (1990), 8-. Details

Resources

See also

  • Angyal, S. J., 'Sir Philip Baxter 1905-1989', Historical Records of Australian Science, 8 (3) (1991), 183-197. https://doi.org/10.1071/HR9910830183. Details
  • Fowler, Robert, 'Chapter 9: Chemical engineering' in Sydney: from settlement to city: an engineering history of Sydney, Don Fraser, ed. (Crows Nest, New South Wales: Engineers Australia, 1989), pp. 185-200. Details
  • Whiffen, N. A.; Norman, J. R., '50 Years of Chemical Engineering in Australia', Journal of the Institution of Engineers, Australia, 37 (7-8) (1965), N62-72. Details

McCarthy, G.J.

Created: 20 October 1993, Last modified: 23 October 2025

EOAS ID: biogs/P001512b.htm

This Edition: 2026 February - 1926 Centenaries
Kooyang - Gariwerd calendar - Late summer: late January to late March - season of eels
Reference: https://www.bom.gov.au/resources/indigenous-weather-knowledge/indigenous-seasonal-calendars/gariwerd-calendar#bom-anchor-list__item-kooyang-season-of-eels

Publisher: Swinburne University of Technology.

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P001512b.htm

For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260