Nick Murphy
Astrophysicist at Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
Somerville, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolNick Murphy is an astrophysicist and research software engineer with a decade of experience at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, where he transitioned from postdoc to staff scientist while teaching graduate plasma astrophysics at Harvard. He blends domain expertise in astronomy and plasma physics with practical software skills, contributing to flagship open-source projects like astropy and PlasmaPy to improve documentation, testing, and unit-handling clarity. Known as a proponent of metadata standardization, he focuses on making complex scientific code more readable, reliable, and reproducible. His work often targets subtle user-facing pitfalls—clarifying unit equivalencies and refining numerical function docstrings—to reduce confusion across the research community. Based in Somerville, MA, he leverages a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a multidisciplinary undergraduate background to bridge rigorous research and developer-friendly tooling. Colleagues value him for meticulous technical writing and a knack for turning intricate scientific concepts into accessible, well-tested code.
10 years of coding experience
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Astronomy, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Astronomy at University of Wisconsin-MadisonB.S., Astronomy & Astrophysics; General Physics; and Mathematical Physics, B.S., Astronomy & Astrophysics; General Physics; and Mathematical Physics at University of Michigan
English
Github Skills (9)
astropy10
python10
scientific-computing10
documentation10
technical-writing10
unit-conversion9
astronomy9
testing9
astrophysics9
Programming languages (15)
Github contributions (5)
PlasmaPy/PlasmaPy
Nov 2015 - Jan 2023
An open source Python package for plasma research and education
Role in this project:
Technical Writer & Documentation Specialist
Technical Writer & Documentation SpecialistContributions:10 releases, 1998 reviews, 1410 commits in 7 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Nick's commits primarily focused on updating the documentation for the PlasmaPy project. Their contributions centered on refining and expanding the documentation, including adding examples and clarifying technical concepts. They also improved the code style guide and ensured the completeness and accessibility of the documentation. The user addressed formatting issues, corrected spelling errors, and expanded the use of ReST substitutions.
physicsheliophysicspythonscienceparticles
astropy/astropy
Apr 2017 - Nov 2022
Astronomy and astrophysics core library
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:78 reviews, 55 commits, 21 PRs in 5 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Nick primarily focused on improving the astropy library's documentation and functionality. They addressed documentation gaps related to unit equivalencies and angular velocity/frequency conversions, clarifying potential user confusion. Further contributions involved updating and expanding docstrings for the `isclose` and `allclose` functions, improving code readability and providing better guidance for users. Lastly, they updated and expanded the test suite for physical types.
astrologypythonscienceastrophysicsastrodynamics
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