Willem F. J. Mörzer Bruyns

In 1969, Mörzer Bruyns joined the Netherlands Maritime Museum in Amsterdam and retired as Senior Curator of Navigation in 2005. In 1995 he was Huntington Fellow at The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia, and from 2005–2007 Sackler Research Fellow in the History of Astronomy and Navigational Sciences at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich in London. In 2003, the University of Leiden awarded him a Ph.D. for his thesis on the introduction, diffusion and manufacturing of the octant in the eighteenth century Dutch Republic, completed under the guidance of Professor Jaap R. Bruijn and Professor C.A. Davids. On his retirement Mörzer Bruyns was presented with a festschrift, Koersvast: Vijf eeuwen navigatie op zee (Zaltbommel: Uitgeverij Aprilis, 2005). In October 2010, the National Maritime Museum awarded him its Caird Medal for 2009 in recognition of his many significant contributions to the history of navigational science and particularly for his catalogue of navigational instruments at Greenwich. In recognition of his work for the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, in 2009, the Marine Society at Salem of 1766, admitted him as an Honorary Governor.

Willem Fredrik Jacob Mörzer Bruyns, (born 1943 in Gosforth, Northumberland, United Kingdom), is a Dutch historian of navigational science, specializing in the history of navigational instruments; he has also published on the history of the Dutch in the Arctic in the nineteenth century. He rose to be Senior Curator of Navigation at the Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum before his retirement in 2005. Since 1972, Mörzer Bruyns published several books and a hundred-and-fifteen articles in scholarly journals, on the history of navigation and navigational instruments, and on the exploration of the Dutch in the Arctic, in the nineteenth century. He wrote seventy-five book reviews on these subjects in scholarly journals.

The son of Willem Fredrik Jacob Mörzer Bruyns, Sr. (1913–1996), a Dutch merchant mariner, and a naval officer (reserve), the young Willem Mörzer Bruyns initially trained as navigation officer at the [Amsterdam Nautical College] (Hogere Zeevaartschool van het Zeemanshuis), Mörzer Bruyns sailed as a junior officer with the Amsterdam-based Netherland Line.