Robert Murphy FRS (1806 – 12 March 1843) was an Irish mathematician and physicist who made contributions to algebra.

Murphy gave six Hebrew lectures in 1830 (receiving £10 as payment), and was appointed as a junior dean in charge of discipline and chapel services in October 1831, a position he held until 1833.

[2] While living in London in difficult circumstances, Murphy wrote a paper on what are now called non-commutative rings.

Murphy was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, London, where "[t]he grave has no headstone nor landing stone nor surround.

In 1830 Murphy was commissioned to write a book on the mathematical theory of electricity, for the use of students at Cambridge.

John Mackey Entitled "A Method of Making a Cube a Double of a Cube, Founded on the Principles of Elementary Geometry", wherein His Principles Are Proved Erroneous and the Required Solution Not Yet Obtained (1824) was the work that launched Murphy's career.

Encouraged by Augustus De Morgan, Murphy wrote articles for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and for the Penny Cyclopaedia.

His final works were Remark on Primitive Radices (1841), Calculations of Logarithms by Means of Algebraic Fractions (1841), and On Atmospheric Refraction (1842).