John Murdoch

John Murdoch (1852–1925) was an American naturalist, ethnologist and librarian. Trained at Yale, he served as naturalist and observer with the United States expedition that spent 1881 to 1883 at Point Barrow, Alaska, during the first International Polar Year. His report on the Iñupiat people of the region, published by the Bureau of Ethnology in 1892, is a detailed record of their houses, tools, hunting, clothing and daily life, and remains a standard source. Murdoch later became librarian of the Smithsonian Institution and wrote on Arctic natural history and ethnology.