Brendan Murphy is Professor of Geology at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada, where he has taught since 1982. An active and distinguished researcher whose interests lie in the processes involved in mountain building, he received the President's Research Award in 1993 from his university and the Distinguished Service Award of the Atlantic Geoscience Society in 1995. He received his Ph.D. from McGill University in 1982, and hails from Birr, Ireland.