When most people think of Ireland's cultural heritage they think of the island of saints and scholars, the Book of Kells, our great writers, Irish music and so on. Ireland has little by way of a scientific heritage - right? Wrong. We have quite a decent scientific heritage that we should take pride in and teach to our children. We have a proven aptitude for science and the current Government support will surely reinvigorate that capacity to do great things. The following are just a few of the major figures in the history of Irish science.
Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was born at Lismore Castle, Co Waterford. Sometimes called the Father of Chemistry, Boyle is a key figure in the history of science. In 1661 he published The Sceptical Chemist. Alchemy, the pseudo-scientific predecessor of chemistry was questioned by Boyle, who taught that the proper object of chemistry was to determine the composition of substances. He coined the term analysis. In 1662 he formulated Boyle's Law which states that the pressure and volume of a gas are inversely related at constant temperature.
Francis Beaufort (1774-1857) was born in Navan, Co Meath, and became the British navy's greatest hydrographer and map-maker. He is best known as the author of the table which classifies the velocity and force of winds at sea - the Beaufort scale. He also developed a system of classifying the weather's various states by letters of the alphabet.
Rev Nicholas Callan (1799-1864) was born near Ardee, Co Louth. He was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy at Maynooth in 1826. Callan acquired a great interest in electrical phenomena and his most notable contribution was the invention of the induction coil, the forerunner of the modern step-up voltage transformer.
William Parsons, third Earl of Rosse (1800-1867), was born in York, England, and brought up at Birr Castle, Co Offaly. In 1845 Parsons built the then largest telescope in the world at Birr, a distinction retained for 70 years. A main purpose in building the telescope was to study the status of the sun and the galaxy in which it lies. The construction of the telescope, particularly of the 72-inch mirror, was a wonderful feat of engineering. The telescope could see farther into space than any other instrument of the time and Parsons discovered that many galaxies are spiral in shape.
George Boole (1815-1864), born in Lincoln, England, was the first Professor of Mathematics at Queen's College Cork (University College Cork today). Boole, sometimes called the father of computer science, developed his system of Boolean algebra while in Cork. This is used today in the design and operation of computers and electronic hardware responsible for modern technology.
William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1864), born in Dublin, became Professor of Astronomy at TCD and Royal Astronomer of Ireland. At the age of nine he knew 13 languages. Hamilton introduced the terms scalar and vector into mathematics and he invented the method of quanternions as a new algebraic approach to three-dimensional geometry, which turned out to be the foundation for much modern algebra.
George Francis Fitzgerald (1851-1901) was born in Dublin and became Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at TCD. He is best remembered for his proposal that a moving body contracts in the direction of its motion, but that this contraction cannot be measured because moving rulers shrink in the same proportion. This was a significant step towards Einstein's special theory of relativity.
George Johnstone Stoney (1826-1911) was born in Dun Laoghaire and became Professor of Natural Philosophy at Queen's College Galway (NUI Galway today). His most notable scientific work was his conception and calculation of the magnitude of the atom of electricity, for which he proposed the name electron.
Ernest Walton (1903-1997), born in Dungarvan, Co Wa terford, was a pioneer nuclear physicist and is Ireland's only science Nobel Laureate. He built the first successful particle accelerator with John Cockroft at Cambridge which they used to first split an atom in 1931. Walton became Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at TCD in 1947. He shared the 1951 Nobel Prize for physics with Cockroft.
Kathleen Lonsdale (1903-1971) was born in Newbridge, Co Kildare, and became Professor of Chemistry at University College, London. She did much important work in X-ray crystallography, including a demonstration that the benzene ring is flat. She was the first woman elected to the fellowship of the Royal Society in 1945. She was a dedicated pacifist and spent a short term in jail in 1943 for her convictions.
John Bell (1928-1990) was born in Belfast. He joined CERN (the European Research Organisation) in Geneva in 1960. He developed a set of equations called Bell's Inequalities that are of fundamental importance in quantum physics. Bell was a leading theoretical physicist of his generation.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943-) was born in Lurgan, Co Armagh, and is Professor of Physics at the Open University. She discovered pulsars - rapidly rotating neutron stars - in 1967 when working as a research student at Cambridge. She continues to study pulsars today.
Two excellent little books, Some People and Places (and More People and Places) in Irish Science and Technology (eds Charles Mollan, William Davis and Brendan Finucane), have been published by the Royal Irish Academy (1985, 1990). They include a great deal about Ireland's scientific heritage.
William Reville is a senior lecturer in biochemistry and director of microscopy.)