About

Biography

Kermit Murray was born in Oakland, California and grew up in the East Bay city of Concord, graduating from Concord High School in 1978. He obtained his B.S. degree in Chemistry with high honors at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1982 and was the Chemistry valedictorian. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics at the University of Colorado in 1988, working with Professor W. Carl Lineberger on the chemistry and spectroscopy of negative ions. He went on to postdoctoral research on infrared spectroscopy at Rice University with Professor Robert F. Curl and at Texas A&M University with Professor David H. Russell, where he developed novel spray ionization methods for MALDI mass spectrometry. At Emory University, he was an assistant professor before moving to Louisiana State University in 2001, where he is now a professor. His research focuses on instrument development and applications of laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry.

Scientific Activities

My research area is chemical analysis using mass spectrometry. Links with information about current projects are below.

• LSU Department of Chemistry (K. K. Murray)
• Murray Group Page
• LSU Chemistry Mass Spectrometry Facility
• IUPAC Mass Spectrometry Terms Project

Kermit Murray Around the Web
I’ve been running various websites since 1994 and my philosophy has always been to try new things and evaluate their utility. Some of the places I currently contribute:

• Mass Spectrometry Blog: I started this as “Mass Spectrometry on the Internet” in 1994 and the blog continues with occasional posts.
• Twitter: I don’t usually tweet manually, but I use Twitterfeed to scrape mass spectrometry journal articles and other news. Twitter is becoming more useful at the annual ASMS conference.
• Facebook: a communication necessity, but I prefer to posting media to this site. I also contribute to the LSU Chemistry Facebook page.
• Wikipedia: I edit Wikipedia because it is the first place most people go for scientific information. Scientists must edit for that information to be as accurate as possible. I also contribute media to Wikimedia Commons and have contributed to Wikisource by porting J. J. Thomson’s Rays of Positive Electricity and Their Application to Chemical Analyses there after it entered the public domain. I also created a short Wikibook on Pinewood Derby car construction and physics.
• Linkedin: I don’t use this site much but I have a link back to professional website and my contact information.
• Trek73: I am keeper of the flame for TREK73, a very early computer game played on teletype and time-share computer.

Hobbies

Two of my hobbies, photography and genealogy, are represented on this site. My other hobbies, such as travel, hiking, and backpacking, are the subject of many of the photos.