was of Huguenot ancestry whose family can be traced back to 15th century France. Matthew Fontaine Maury's grandfather (the Reverend James Maury) was an inspiring teacher to three future US Presidents: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe. Maury also had Dutch-American ethnicity from the "Minor" family of early Virginia.

M. F. Maury was born in 1806 in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, but his family moved to Franklin, Tennessee when he was five. He wanted to emulate the naval career of his older brother, Flag Lieutenant John Minor Maury, who however caught yellow fever after fighting pirates as an officer in the United States Navy. As a result of John's painful death, Matthew Maury's father, Richard, forbade him from joining the Navy. Maury considered attending West Point to get an education, but he obtained a Naval appointment through the influence of Senator Sam Houston in 1825, at the age of 19.

Maury joined the Navy as a midshipman on board the frigate Brandywine which was carrying the Marquis de La Fayette home to France. Almost immediately, Maury began to study the seas and record methods of navigation.

Matthew Maury's seagoing days came to an abrupt end at the age of 33 after a stagecoach accident broke his hip and knee. Thereafter, he devoted his time to the study of naval meteorology, navigation, charting the winds and currents, seeking the "Paths of the Seas" mentioned in Psalm 8 in the Bible.

His hard work on and love of plotting the oceans paid off when he became the first superintendent of the United States Naval Observatory in 1842, holding that position until his resignation in April 1861. The observatory's primary mission was to care for the United States Navy's marine chronometers, charts, and other navigational equipment.

As a sailor, Maury noted that there were numerous lessons that had been learned by shipmasters about the effects of adverse winds and drift currents on the path of a ship. The captains recorded these lessons faithfully in their logbooks, but they were then forgotten. At the Observatory, Maury uncovered an enormous collection of thousands of old ships' logs and charts in storage in trunks dating back to the start of the United States Navy. Maury pored over these documents to collect information on winds, calms, and currents for all seas in all seasons. His dream was to put this information in the hands of all captains. (Source: Nautical Gazette May '40)

Maury also used the old ships' logs to chart the migration of whales. Whalers at the time went to sea, sometimes for years, without knowing that whales migrate and that their paths could be charted.

Maury's work on ocean currents led him to advocate his theory of the Northwest Passage, as well as the hypothesis that an area in the ocean near the North Pole is occasionally free of ice. The reasoning behind this was sound. Logs of old whaler ships indicated the designs and markings of harpoons. Harpoons found in captured whales in the Atlantic had been shot by ships in the Pacific and vice versa, and this occurred with a frequency that would have been impossible had the whales traveled around Cape Horn.

Maury, knowing a whale to be a mammal, theorized that a northern passage between the oceans that was free of ice must exist to enable the whales to surface and breathe. This became a popular idea that inspired many explorers to seek a reliably navigable sea route. Many of those explorers died in their search.

Lieutenant Maury published his Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic, which showed sailors how to use the ocean's currents and winds to their advantage and drastically reduced the length of ocean voyages; his Sailing Directions and Physical Geography of the Seas and Its Meteorology remain standard. Maury's uniform system of recording synoptic oceanographic data was adopted by navies and merchant marines around the world and was used to develop charts for all the major trade routes.

Maury's Observatory team included James Melville Gilliss, Lieutenant John Mercer Brooke, William Lewis Herndon, Lieutenant Isaac Strain, John Herndon Maury of the Darien Gap expedition, Lardner Gibbon and others ... but their duty was always temporary at the Observatory, and new men had to be trained over and over again. Thus Lt. M F Maury was working with astronomical work and nautical work at the same time, while constantly training new temporary men to assist in these works.

Maury advocated much in the way of naval reform, including a school for the Navy that would rival the army's West Point. This reform was heavily pushed by Maury's many "Scraps from the Lucky Bag" and other articles printed in the newspapers and many changes came about in the navy including his finally fulfilled dream of the creation of the United States Naval Academy.

Maury also advocated an international sea and land weather service. Having charted the seas and currents, he worked on charting land weather forecasting. Congress refused to appropriate funds for a land system of weather observations.

Maury early became convinced that adequate scientific knowledge of the sea could be obtained only through international cooperation. He proposed that the United States invite the maritime nations of the world to a conference to establish a “universal system” of meteorology, and he was the leading spirit of that pioneer scientific conference when it met in Brussels in 1853. Within a few years, nations owning three fourths of the shipping of the world were sending their oceanographic observations to Maury at the Naval Observatory, where the information was evaluated and the results given worldwide distribution. (Source: Matthew Fontaine Maury, Scientist of the Sea, Frances L. Williams, (1969) ISBN 0-8135-0433-3)

Maury was sent by the United States as advocator of his sea data collecting ideas but not for land. Still, as a result of the Brussels conference a large number of nations, including many traditional enemies, agreed to cooperate in the sharing of land and sea weather data using uniform standards. (Source: Nautical Gazette May '40)

It was soon after the Brussels conference when Prussia, Spain, Sardinia, the free city of Hamburg, the republic of Bremen, Chile, Austria, and Brazil, and others all joined the enterprise.

The Pope established honorary flags of distinction for the ships of the papal states, which could be awarded only to those vessels which filled out and sent to Maury in Washington D.C. the Maury abstract logs. (Source: Matthew Fontaine Maury by Charles Lee Lewis, Copyright, 1927 the United States Naval Institute.)

In the early 1850s Matthew Fontaine Maury had planned and did send by 1851, his cousin, William Lewis Herndon, and another co-worker at the Naval Observatory, Lardner Gibbon, both of whom worked at the USN Observatory, to explore the Valley of the Amazon region to Brazil and the Atlantic Ocean, while gathering as much information as possible for trade and slavery in any of those areas. In addition, Maury thought the area could serve as a "safety valve" by allowing Southern slave owners to move there or sell their slaves there. He reasoned that Brazil was bringing in new slaves from Africa and by moving those who were already slaves in the United States to Brazil, there would be less slavery or in time perhaps no slavery in as many areas of the United States as possible while also cutting down on bringing new slaves into Brazil which only increased slavery through the capture and enslavement in Brazil of more Africans. "Imagine", Maury wrote to his cousin, "waking up some day and finding our country free of slavery!" (Life of Matthew Fontaine Maury, U.S.N. and C.S.N., compiled by his daughter, Diana Fontaine Maury-Corbin).In 1849, Maury spoke out on the need for a transcontinental railroad to join the eastern United States to California. He recommended a southerly route with Memphis, Tennessee as the eastern terminus, since the city is equidistant from Lake Michigan and the Gulf of Mexico. He argued that a southerly route running through Texas would avoid winter snows and could open up commerce with the northern states of Mexico. Maury also advocated construction of a railroad across the Isthmus of Panama.

With the outbreak of the American Civil War, Maury, a native of Virginia, ended the career that he dearly loved by handing in his commission as a U.S. Navy Commander in order to serve Virginia, which had joined the Confederacy, as Chief of Sea Coast, River and Harbor Defences. Because he was an international figure, he was ordered to go abroad for many reasons including propaganda for the Confederacy, for peace, and for purchasing ships. He also went to England, Ireland, and France, acquiring ships and supplies for the Confederacy. Through speeches and newspaper publications, Maury tried desperately to get other nations to stop the American Civil War, carrying pleas for peace in one hand and a sword in the other, each to deal with whatever the outcome.

Maury also perfected an electric torpedo which raised havoc with northern shipping. Maury had experience with the transatlantic cable and electricity flowing through wires underwater when working with Cyrus West Field and Samuel Finley Breese Morse. The torpedoes, similar to present-day contact mines, were said by the Secretary of the Navy in 1865 "to have cost the Union more vessels than all other causes combined." (Source: The Nautical Gazette May '40)

The war brought ruin to many in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where Maury's immediate family lived. Following the war, after serving Maximilian in Mexico as "Imperial Commissioner of Immigration" and building Carlotta and New Virginia Colony for displaced Confederates and immigrants from other lands, Maury accepted a teaching position at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), holding the chair of physics.

Maury advocated the creation of an agricultural college to complement VMI. This led to the establishment of the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia in 1872. Maury declined the offer to become its first president partly because of his age. He had previously been suggested as president of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1848 by Benjamin Blake Minor in his publication the Southern Literary Messenger. Maury considered becoming president of St. John's College in Annapolis Maryland, the University of Alabama, and the University of Tennessee.[1] It appears that he preferred being close to General Robert E. Lee in Lexington from statements Maury made in letters. Maury served as a pall bearer for General Lee. (Source: Southern Historical Society's Papers)

During his time at VMI, Maury wrote a book entitled The Physical Geography of Virginia. He had once been a gold mining superintendent outside of Fredericksburg, Virginia, and had studied geology intensly during that time, so was well equipped to write such a book. During the Civil War, more battles took place in Virginia than any other state (Tennessee was second), and Maury's aim was to assist war-torn Virginia in discovering and extracting minerals, improving farming and whatever else could assist her to rebuild after such destruction.

During its first 1848 meeting, Maury helped launch the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Maury later gave talks in Europe about cooperation on a weather bureau for land just as he had charted the winds and predicted storms at sea many years before. He gave these Weather on Land speeches until his last days when he collapsed giving a speech. He went home after he recovered and told Ann Hull Herndon-Maury, his wife, "I have come home to die."

Matthew Fontaine Maury died at home in Lexington. He was exhausted from traveling throughout this nation while giving speeches promoting Land Meteorology. Maury breathed his last at 12:40 P.M., on Saturday, February 1, 1873. He was attended by his eldest son, Major Richard Launcelot Maury and son-in- law, Major Spottswood Wellford Corbin. Maury asked his daughters and wife to leave the room. His last words were, "All's well", a nautical expression telling of calm conditions at sea, as he raised his hands into the air as though being taken to a better place. (Source: Life of Maury by his daughter, Diana Fontaine Maury-Corbin) His body was placed on display in the VMI library. Maury was initially buried in the Gilham family vault in Lexington's cemetery, across from Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, until, after some delay into the next year, when his remains were taken through Goshen Pass to Richmond, Virginia. He was reburied between Presidents James Monroe and John Tyler in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.

After decades of national and international hard work averaging 14 hours per day, Maury received fame and honors, including being knighted by several nations and given medals with precious gems, as well as a collection of all medals struck by Pope Pius IX during his pontificate, a book dedication and more from Father Angelo Secchi, who was a student of Maury from 1848 - 1849 in the U.S. Naval Observatory. The two remained life-long friends. Other religious friends of Maury included James Hervey Otey, M. F. Maury's former teacher who, before 1857, worked with Bishop Leonidas Polk on the construction of the University of the South in Tennessee. While visiting there, Maury was convinced by his old teacher to give the "cornerstone speech".

As a United States Navy officer, he declined awards from foreign nations as their acceptance was against U.S. military policy. However, they were offered to Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury's wife, Ann Hull Herndon-Maury, who accepted them for her husband. Some have been placed at Virginia Military Institute, others were loaned to the Smithsonian and yet others remain in the family. Matthew Maury became a Commodore (often a title of courtesy) in the Virginia Provisional Navy, and a Commander in the Confederacy.

A monument to Maury, by sculptor Frederick William Sievers, was unveiled in Richmond on November 11, 1929. Maury Hall, the home of the Naval Science Department at the University of Virginia and headquarters of the University's Navy ROTC battalion, was named in his honor. The original building of the College of William & Mary Virginia Institute of Marine Science is named Maury Hall as well. Another Maury Hall, named after him, houses the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and the Systems Engineering Department at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

Ships have been named in his honor, including three United States Navy ships named USS Maury. A fourth United States Navy ship named in his honor was the "USS Commodore Maury" (SP-656), patrol vessel and mine sweeper.http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-c/sp656.htm] of World War I. A World War II Liberty Ship was also named in his honor. Additionally, Tidewater Community College, based in Norfolk Virginia, owns the R/V Matthew F. Maury This ship is used for Oceanography research and student cruises.

Lake Maury in Newport News, Virginia is named after Maury. The Lake is located on the Mariners' Museum property and is encircled by a walking trail. The Maury River, located entirely in Rockbridge County, Virginia, near Virginia Military Institute (where Maury was on faculty), also honors the scientist, as does a Maury on the Moon.

Additionally, a high school in Norfolk, VA is named for Maury, and has been ranked in the top 1000 high schools in the country, and the highest in the city, by Newsweek. Matthew Fontaine Maury High School is located in Norfolk Public Schools which was named the Best Urban School District last year. Maury County, TN is named for his great-uncle.

Also, Maury Elementary School, in Alexandria, VA was named for Matthew Maury. Maury Elementary was built in 1926.

Dan Graves listed Matthew Maury among his 48 great Scientists of Faith on grounds that: Maury lived by the Scriptures; he fully and unconditionally believed in what the Holy Scriptures stated; he hardly ever spoke or wrote without the inclusion of scriptural references; he prayed every day.