Born: May 10th, 1937
Died: November 28th, 2023
Máire Mulcahy, who has died aged 86, was one of this country’s most prominent scientists, flourishing in an academic area previously dominated by men.
A marine zoologist, Mulcahy was a significant influence in teaching and research. She played a pivotal role in the creation of the Irish Maritime Institute in 1992, where she served as its first chairperson. Mulcahy was also the first female vice-president of University College Cork (UCC), missing out only narrowly in the year of her appointment – 1989 – from becoming the first female president of that institution. Instead, she became the first female deputy head of any third-level institution in the Republic.
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Graduating with a BSc in 1958, Mulcahy and her then husband, Noel Mulcahy, an academic chemist, both went on for postgraduate study to the University of Manchester, where she gained her PhD. Returning to UCC as a lecturer in the 1960s, her life was driven by a strong determination to advance her subject – then in its relative infancy in this country – both in university and more widely in government and policymaking.
Throughout her long period in the UCC faculty of science, she became head of the department of zoology and animal ecology (now part of the university’s department of biology, ecology and environmental science or BEES). She grew that department, introducing many new courses, including a degree in ecology and two new MSc degrees, in aquaculture and fisheries.
A renowned expert in fish and shellfish health and disease, she supervised many MSc and PhD students, and served as dean of the science faculty. She was a notably active board member in several national and local organisations. These included the Heritage Council, the National Cancer Registry, Cork Savings Bank (now part of PTSB), and the Salmon Research Agency.
Her work with the Marine Institute was especially notable. Her former colleague, Prof Tony Lewis, in an online tribute, credits Mulcahy as a “driving force in support of this neglected area” in relation both to the building of the institute’s headquarters at Rinnville, Co Galway, and her strong support for what became the Science Foundation of Ireland Marine Centre at the Beaufort Building in Ringaskiddy, Co Cork.
After her retirement, a special medal, the Mulcahy Medal, was struck in her honour, and is awarded annually to the best final-year student in zoology.
In a tribute addressed to staff following her death, the president of UCC, Prof John O’Halloran described her contribution to the different areas of academic and academic-related life, and to the wider community in Cork, as “enormous”.
“She was an inspirational leader who paved the way for so many women in academia,” he said.
Mulcahy was born Máire McHenry in Cork, and was educated at Scoil Mhuire. She was one of six children of an academic family of considerable distinction. Her father, Dr John McHenry, was a renowned physicist who, after graduating from UCC, completed his PhD at Cambridge. There, as an equally accomplished sportsman, he earned a blue in the university’s senior VIII in one of the annual Oxford and Cambridge boat races on the River Thames.
He was fluent Irish speaker and when he became president of UCC, a post he held for three years in the 1960s, he always spoke by telephone to the then chancellor of the NUI, president Éamon de Valera, as Gaeilge.
Mulcahy’s personal life was marked by significant tragedy. In 1968, while she was six months pregnant with her daughter Marianne, her husband Noel was killed in the Tuskar Rock disaster, in which an Aer Lingus plane crashed into the Irish Sea en route from Cork to London, with the loss of all 61 people on board.
In 1993 she married again: an old childhood friend, Brian McCarthy, an agricultural scientist. But he developed dementia and in 2011 she was widowed once more.
After her retirement she completed a master’s degree in ecology and religion, and became an advocate for climate justice.
Physically active all her life, Mulcahy played tennis and squash late into her life, and also enjoyed sea swimming.
Mulcahy is survived by her daughter, Marianne Hunter, and by her three stepchildren from her marriage to Brian McCarthy, Garrett, Darren and Kara; and by her brother Seán. Her siblings Margaret, Patricia, Nan and Der predeceased her.