Robert Cushman Murphy was one of the 20th century’s great ornithologists. For six decades he travelled the world in search of new and rare birds with the Museum of Natural History in New York City. In 1936, he penned Oceanic Birds of South America that went on to win the prestigious John Burroughs Medal for excellence in natural history and the Brewster Medal of the American Ornithologists Union. Murphy found bones of an extinct moa in New Zealand, and the first live cahow last seen in the early seventeenth century. Murphy's name has been attached to a louse, fish, plant, lizard, an Antarctic inlet, spider, and two mountains. Robert Cushman Murphy died in 1973.

Past recipients of the Robert Cushman Murphy Prize

Dr. John C. Coulson, 1993, for his outstanding contributions to the ecology of colonial waterbirds. John Coulson is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Waterbirds journal. He is the immediate past Editor-in-Chief of the Ibis journal, and until recently, was Reader in Zoology at the Durham University, Durham, England. He has made outstanding contributions to the ecology of colonial waterbirds. His main research concerns understanding the population and behavioral ecology of colonially-breeding seabirds and understanding coloniality and colony structure in birds. This work includes his distinguished long-term studies of the Black-legged Kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla) and Common Eider (Somateria mollissima). He has also published extensively on insects of upland and tundra areas. He is also among the first students in seabird ecology that started investigating the causes of heterogeneity in key life-history traits, such as survival and fecundity, in long-lived seabirds. He has been awarded the Godman-Savin Medal by the British Ornithologists' Union (1992) and the Robert Cushman Murphy Prize of the Waterbird Society (1993).

Dr. John P. Croxall, 1996, for his work on seabirds and marine mammal communities in the Southern Ocean. John Croxall is currently Deputy Chief Scientific Officer at the British Antarctic Survey, holding honorary Professorships at the Universities of Birmingham and Durham. He is the immediate past-President (1995-1999) of the British Ornithologists' Union and since 1998 has been Chairman of Council of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. His main research concerns understanding the role of seabirds and marine mammals in the dynamics of marine systems. This work includes the development and use of new instruments and approaches to reveal the at-sea life of these animals. This has given rise to new practical and theoretical models of energy flux to higher level predators, coupled with detailed and innovative studies of population processes, physiology, and ecology of marine vertebrates. In parallel with this work, since the 1980s he has led international initiatives for the conservation and sustainable use of marine ecosystems in general and seabirds in particular. This his involved coordinating numerous international conservation initiatives, most recently those addressing incidental mortality of seabirds in longline fisheries. He has also played a key role in developing new approaches to the management of commercial fisheries, whereby sustainable harvesting takes account of the needs of dependent predators, particularly through the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). He has been awarded the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London (1984), the President's Medal of the British Ecological Society (1995), the Robert Cushman Murphy Prize and Medal of the Waterbird Society (1996), and the Marsh Award for Conservation of the Zoological Society of London (1999).

Dr. Pierre Jouventin, 1997, for his work on reproductive strategies of seabirds in the French sub-Antarctic and Antarctic territories. Pierre Jouventin is currently Senior Researcher at the Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) of Montpellier. He is the past-Director (1987-1999) of the CNRS Research Unit Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé whose main research theme is the study of the reproductive strategies in vertebrates. His main research concerns the study of the reproductive strategies of seabirds, mainly in the French sub-Antarctic and Antarctic territories. He is now back to his favorite discipline, eco-ethology in the context of evolution. His work, described in more than 150 publications, demonstrates the convergence of ecological, ethological, and physiological adaptations in terms of optimal breeding seasons. He also used solid research results to promote seabird conservation worldwide.

Rudi H. Drent, 2001, for his work on the energetics of avian parental behavior from the standpoint of individual optimisation. He has made an exceptional contribution to ornithology. He has accomplished considerable work on the energetics of avian parental behavior from the standpoint of individual optimization. He has worked mainly on waterfowl (geese and swans) and wader biology, particularly Oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus) and the Red Knot (Calidris canutus), and seabirds (terns) but also with the prey of these birds. He has acted as a great stimulus to research and has had a series of outstanding students working with him. His work on the metabolic rates and energy sources in birds with S. Daan has been frequently quoted, and R. H. Drent and Th. Meijer have brought this aspect up to date in a recent paper in The Ibis, where they deal with different breeding strategies. His most recent work with his team on the migration and energetics of geese has been outstanding, involving work in The Netherlands, Spitzbergen, and Taimyr northern Siberia.