Williamson "Wick" Murray

Class of 1957 Distinguished Chair in Naval Heritage

Email:  wmurray@usna.edu

Selected Biography:

Williamson Murray graduated from Yale University in 1963 and earned his doctorate from that institution in 1975.  In between undergraduate and graduate school he served in the United States Air Force, including a tour in Southeast Asia.  He has taught at Yale University and Ohio State University and took early retirement from Ohio State in 1995.  He has taught at the United States Military Academy, the Air War College, the Naval War College, the Army War College and Marine Corps University.  In 1994 and 1995 he was the Centennial Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics.  Over the 1991-1992 academic year he was a Secretary of the Navy Fellow at the Naval War College and from 1995 to 1997 he was the Horner Professor of Military Theory at the Marine Corps University.  At present he is professor emeritus at The Ohio State University, Senior Fellow at the Institute of Defense Analyses, and Class of 1957 Distinguished Professor at the United States Naval Academy.

Professor Murray has published widely.  He is the author of The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938-1939 (Princeton University Press), Luftwaffe (Nautical and Aviation Press), German Military Effectiveness (Nautical and Aviation Press), The Air War 1914-1945 (Weidenfeld and Nicholson), and The Air War in the Persian Gulf (Nautical and Aviation Press).  Professor Murray has also co-authored a number of works: A War to Be Won, Fighting the Second World War with Allan Millett, The Cambridge Illustrated History of War with Geoffrey Parker, and The Iraq War, A Military History with Robert Scales.  In addition, he has been the co-editor of a number of collections dealing with important topics in military history: Military Effectiveness, 3 vols., with Allan Millett (Allen and Unwin); Calculations, Net Assessment and the Coming of World War II with Allan Millett (the Free Press); Military Innovation in the Interwar Period with Allan Millett (Cambridge University Press); The Making of Strategy, Rulers, States, and War with MacGregor Knox (Cambridge University Press); The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050 (Cambridge University Press); and The Importance of History to the Military Profession with Richard Hart Sinnreich (Cambridge University Press).  At present he is completing a work on military adaptation in war; a collection of his articles on military history; and an edited collection of articles on "The Making of Peace" with James Lacey.