The Murnaghan equation of state is a relationship between the volume of a body and the pressure to which it is subjected. This is one of many state equations that have been used in earth sciences and shock physics to model the behavior of matter under conditions of high pressure. It owes its name to Francis D. Murnaghan who proposed it in 1944 to reflect material behavior under a pressure range as wide as possible to reflect an experimentally established fact: the more a solid is compressed, the more difficult it is to compress further.