seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Category Archives: Education


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Birth of Samuel Haughton, Scientist, Mathematician & Doctor

samuel-haughtonSamuel Haughton, scientist, mathematician, and doctor, is born in Carlow, County Carlow on December 21, 1821. He is “famous” for calculating the drop required to kill a hanged man instantly.

Haughton is the son of James Haughton. His father, the son of a Quaker, but himself a Unitarian, is an active philanthropist, a strong supporter of Father Theobald Mathew, a vegetarian, and an anti-slavery worker and writer.

Haughton has a distinguished career at Trinity College, Dublin and in 1844 he is elected a fellow. Working on mathematical models under James MacCullagh, he is awarded in 1848 the Cunningham Medal by the Royal Irish Academy. In 1847 he has his ordination to the priesthood but he is not someone who preaches. He is appointed as professor of geology at Trinity College in 1851 and holds the position for thirty years. He begins to study medicine in 1859. He earns his MD degree in 1862 from the University of Dublin.

Haughton becomes registrar of the Medical School. He focuses on improving the status of the school and representing the university on the General Medical Council from 1878 to 1896. In 1858 he is elected fellow of the Royal Society. He gains honorary degrees from Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh. At Trinity College Dublin he moves the first-ever motion at the Academic Council to admit women to the University on March 10, 1880. Through his work as Professor of Geology and his involvement with the Royal Zoological Society, he has witnessed the enthusiasm and contribution of women in the natural sciences. Although thwarted by opponents on the Council he continues to campaign for the admission of women to TCD until his death in 1897. It is 1902 before his motion is finally passed, five years after his death.

In 1866, Haughton develops the original equations for hanging as a humane method of execution, whereby the neck is broken at the time of the drop, so that the condemned person does not slowly strangle to death. “On hanging considered from a Mechanical and Physiological point of view” is published in the London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Vol. 32 No. 213 (July 1866), calling for a drop energy of 2,240 ft-lbs. From 1886 to 1888, he serves as a member of the Capital Sentences Committee, the report of which suggests an Official Table of Drops based on 1,260 ft-lbs of energy.

Haughton writes papers on many subjects for journals in London and Dublin. His topics include the laws of equilibrium, the motion of solid and fluid bodies, sun-heat, radiation, climates and tides. His papers cover the granites of Leinster and Donegal and the cleavage and joint-planes of the Old Red Sandstone of Waterford.

Haughton is president of the Royal Irish Academy from 1886 to 1891, and secretary of the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland for twenty years. In 1880 he gives the Croonian Lecture on animal mechanics to the Royal Society.

Haughton is also involved in the Dublin and Kingstown Railway company, in which he looks after the building of the first locomotives. It is the first railway company in the world to build its own locomotives.

Samuel Haughton dies on October 31, 1897 and is buried in the Church of the Holy Cross Cemetery in Killeshin, County Laois.


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Birth of Michael Hayes, Politician & Professor

michael-hayesMichael Joseph Hayes, Fine Gael politician and professor of Irish, is born in Dublin on December 1, 1889. He serves as Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann from 1922 to 1932, Minister for Foreign Affairs from August 1922 to September 1922 and Minister for Education January 1922 to August 1922. He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the National University of Ireland constituency from 1921 to 1933. He is a Senator from 1938 to 1965.

Hayes is educated at the Synge Street CBS and at University College Dublin (UCD). He later becomes a lecturer in French at the University. In 1913, he joins the Irish Volunteers and fights in Jacob’s biscuit factory during the Easter Rising in 1916. He escapes capture but is arrested in 1920 and interned at Ballykinlar, County Down.

Hayes is first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Sinn Féin TD for the National University of Ireland constituency at the 1921 general election. At the 1922 general election he is elected as a Pro-Treaty Sinn Féin TD. He serves as Minister for Education from January to September 1922, as part of the Dail Aireacht ministry as opposed to the Provisional Government. He has special responsibility for secondary education. He is also acting Minister for Foreign Affairs from August to September 1922. He supports the Anglo-Irish Treaty during the crucial debates in 1922. That same year he is elected Ceann Comhairle of the first Dáil of the Irish Free State. He holds that post for ten years until 1932.

At the 1923 general election, Hayes is elected as a Cumann na nGaedheal TD for two constituencies, Dublin South and National University of Ireland. He resigns his seat in Dublin South following the election.

Hayes loses his Dáil seat at the 1933 general election, but is elected to Seanad Éireann in 1938 for Fine Gael. He remains a Senator until 1965, acting as leader of government and opposition there.

Hayes becomes Professor of Irish at University College Dublin in 1951.

Michael Hayes dies at the age of 86 on July 11, 1976 in Dublin.


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Birth of Irish Language Scholar Osborn Bergin

CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v62), quality = 100Osborn Joseph Bergin, a scholar of the Irish language and early Irish literature, is born in Cork, County Cork on November 26, 1873.

Bergin is the sixth child and eldest son of Osborn Roberts Bergin and Sarah Reddin, and is educated at Queen’s College Cork, now University College Cork. He then goes to Germany for advanced studies in Celtic languages, working with Heinrich Zimmer at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, now the Humboldt University of Berlin, and later with Rudolf Thurneysen at the University of Freiburg, where he writes his dissertation on palatalization in 1906. He then returns to Ireland and teaches at the School of Irish Learning and at University College Dublin.

Within one year of becoming Director of the School of Irish Studies in the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Bergin resigns both the senior professorship and his office of director. The reason for his resignation is never made public.

Bergin, who never uses the name Joseph except when signing with his initials, does not seem to have felt the need of institutional religion, and during his lifetime, he rarely attends religious services. He develops Irish nationalist sympathies and remains a firm nationalist all his life but without party affiliations. From the number of Irish-speakers living in Cork, he quickly masters the spoken Irish of West Munster. By 1897, his knowledge of spoken and literary Modern Irish is so strong that he is appointed lecturer in Celtic in Queen’s College, Cork. It is during this time that he becomes an active member of the Gaelic League.

Bergin publishes extensively in the journal for Irish scholarship, Ériu. He is best known for his discovery of Bergin’s Law, which states that while the normal order of a sentence in Old Irish is verb-subject-object, it is permissible for the verb, in the conjunct form, to be placed at the end of the sentence. His friend Frank O’Connor writes humorously that while he discovers the law “he never really believed in it.” He writes poetry in Irish and makes a number of well-received translations of Old Irish love poetry.

Bergin is celebrated in Brian O’Nolan‘s poem Binchy and Bergin and Best, originally printed in the Cruiskeen Lawn column in The Irish Times and now included in The Best of Myles. He is noted for his feuds with George Moore and William Butler Yeats, but he enjoys a lifelong friendship with George William Russell. Frank O’Connor describes Bergin’s eccentricities affectionately in his memoir My Father’s Son.

Osborn Bergin dies in a nursing home in Dublin at the age of 76 on October 6, 1950, having never married.


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Death of Margaret Mary Pearse

margaret-mary-pearseMargaret Mary Pearse, Fianna Fáil politician and teacher, dies at Linden Convalescent Home in Dublin on November 7, 1968. She is a sister of Patrick Pearse, one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, and Willie Pearse, both of whom are executed for their part in the Rising.

Pearse is born on August 24, 1878 at 27 Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street) in Dublin, the eldest child of James Pearse and Margaret Pearse (née Brady), who serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) in the 1920s. She is educated at the Holy Faith Convent in Glasnevin. After leaving school, she trains as a teacher. She helps to found St. Enda’s School with her brothers Patrick and Willie. Following the executions of her brothers in the aftermath of the Easter Rising, she continues to run St. Enda’s, along with Fergus De Búrca, until 1933.

Following in her mother’s footsteps, Pearse is first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil TD for the Dublin County constituency at the 1933 general election. She is defeated at the 1937 general election on the 7th count of votes but is elected to the Administrative Panel of the 2nd Seanad. She serves in the Seanad until her death in 1968, however, she and her mother are never considered to be more than figureheads for the party. She is a founding member of the teaching staff of Ardscoil Éanna in Crumlin, Dublin, upon its establishment in 1939.

Illness forces Pearse into the Linden Convalescent Home in Blackrock, County Dublin when she is in her 80s. In 1967, when she is 89 years old, her condition is described to be deteriorating. However, in 1968 during the months leading up to her 90th birthday, she leaves the Linden Convalescent Home for a short while in order to spend her birthday at St. Endas in Rathfarnham. The president of Ireland at the time, Éamon de Valera, visits her at St. Endas to congratulate her on her upcoming 90th birthday.

Margaret Pearse dies, unmarried, at the Linden Convalescent Home in Blackrock, County Dublin, on November 7, 1968 and is given a state funeral. President de Valera, the church and the state all pay tribute to her at the funeral. She is buried beside her parents and sister at Glasnevin Cemetery. The Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, says that Margaret Mary Pearse is the last remaining member of the noble Pearse family. He says her life, like her patriotic brothers, was dedicated to Ireland.

As per her mother’s wishes, Pearse bequeaths St. Enda’s to the people of Ireland as a memorial to her brother’s sacrifice. The school is now home to the Pearse Museum.


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Magee College Opens in Derry, County Londonderry

magee-college-1870Magee College opens on October 10, 1865 as a Presbyterian Christian arts and theological college in Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Since 1953, it has had no religious affiliation and provides a broad range of undergraduate and postgraduate academic degree programmes in disciplines ranging from business, law, social work, creative arts & technologies, cinematic arts, design, computer science and computer games to psychology and nursing.

The Magee Campus gains its name from Martha Magee, the widow of a Presbyterian minister, who, in 1845, bequeathed £20,000 to the Presbyterian Church in Ireland to found a college for theology and the arts. It opens in 1865 primarily as a theological college, but accepts students from all denominations to study a variety of subjects. It is a college of the Royal University of Ireland from 1880 and later becomes associated with Trinity College, Dublin when the Royal University is dissolved in 1909 and replaced by the National University of Ireland.

During World War II, the college is taken over by the Admiralty for Royal NavyRoyal Navy operational use, becoming with Ebrington Barracks (HMS Ferret), a major facility in the Battle of the Atlantic. A 2013 BBC report describes a secret major control bunker, later buried beneath the lawns of the college. From 1941 this bunker, part of Base One Europe, together with similar bunkers in Derby House, Liverpool and Whitehall is used to control one million Allied personnel and fight the Nazi U-boat threat.

In 1953, Magee Theological College separates from the remainder of the college, eventually moving to Belfast in a 1978 merger that forms Union Theological College. Also in 1953, Magee College breaks its ties with Dublin and becomes Magee University College. It is hoped by groups led by the University for Derry Committee that this university college would become Northern Ireland’s second university after Queen’s University Belfast. However, in the 1960s, following the recommendations in The Lockwood Report by Sir John Lockwood, Master of Birkbeck College, London and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of London, the Parliament of Northern Ireland makes a controversial decision to pass it over in favour of a new university in Coleraine. Instead it is incorporated into the two-campus New University of Ulster in 1969. The next fourteen years see the college halve in size, while development focuses on the main Coleraine campus.

In 1984, the New University merges with the Ulster Polytechnic, and Magee becomes the early focus of development of a new four-campus university, the University of Ulster. Student and faculty numbers recover and grow rapidly over the next ten to fifteen years, accompanied by numerous construction projects. Magee grows from just 273 students in 1984 to over 4,000 undergraduates in 2012. In 2012, the University continues to lobby the Northern Ireland Executive for an additional 1,000 full-time undergraduate places, leading to 6,000 students at Magee in 2017.

On September 14, 2013 Magee hosts, for the first time on the island of Ireland, the 23rd International Loebner Prize Contest in Artificial Intelligence based on the Turing test proposed by the renowned British computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950. Turing also works on cracking the Enigma machine code at Bletchley Park which is instrumental in the Battle of the Atlantic.

In October 2014 the University of Ulster is rebranded as Ulster University.

(Pictured: Magee College, c. 1870)


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Birth of Arthur Aston Luce, Professor at Trinity College

arthur-aston-luceArthur Aston Luce, professor of philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin, and also Precentor of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin (1952–1973), is born in Gloucester, England on August 21, 1882. He holds many clerical appointments, including Vice-Provost of Trinity from 1946 to 1952. He is widely known as an authority on the philosopher George Berkeley. His fellowship of Trinity College from 1912 to 1977 is a record.

Luce is the fourth son of the Reverend John James Luce and Alice Luce (née Stubbs). He is educated at Lindley Lodge School and Eastbourne College. He enters Trinity College, Dublin in 1901. He obtains his BA in 1905, BD in 1908 and MA in 1911.

Luce’s earlier work focuses largely on theological matters within Christianity. His academic career is interrupted by World War I, in which he serves with the 12th Royal Irish Rifles. He is awarded the Military Cross in 1917. After the war, he publishes “Monophysitism Past and Present” (1921) which deals with the nature of Jesus and his relationship to the world. The following year, he publishes his Donnellan Lectures on Henri Bergson where he examines issues in psychology and evolution as well as religion.

From the 1930s, Luce becomes interested in the Irish philosopher George Berkeley. He feels many of the previous studies of Berkeley are in many ways inadequate and sometimes wrong. His unearthing of new sources on Berkeley as well as better ways of interpreting existing sources guide his work in this direction. He stresses the role of the French monk Nicolas Malebranche on influencing the thought of the young Berkeley. Prior to his Berkeley and Malebranche (1934), Berkeley had been seen almost solely in the patrimony of John Locke and empiricism.

Berkeley’s mature philosophy is given lucid exposition by Luce in his 1945 work “Berkeley’s Immaterialism”. Along with Thomas Edmund Jessop, he edits The Works of George Berkeley (in nine volumes, 1948–1957).

Luce is not only a Berkeley scholar but comes to be a believer in Berkelianism itself. In “Sense without Matter” (1954) he attempts to bring Berkeley up to date by modernising the philosophers vocabulary and putting the issues Berkeley faced in today’s terms.

Berkeley’s personal reputation among historians and the public is also an area which Luce feels needs correcting and updating. Some studies of Berkeley had contributed to his reputation as a dreamer or a loner who often hid his real views. Luce’s “Life of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne” (1949) takes aim at this picture of Berkeley and, by careful use of often new sources, paints a more grounded picture of the man.

In 1918, Luce marries Lilian Mary Thomson, with whom he has three children. Tragically, his wife and young daughter drown in 1940. His elder son, Professor John Victor Luce (1920–2011), is also an academic at Trinity and also serves as vice-provost.

Luce dies in Dublin on June 28, 1977 shortly after an assault by a man who has an antipathy towards clergymen.


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Birth of John Kells Ingram, Economist & Poet

CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v62), quality = 90John Kells Ingram, economist and poet who starts his career as a mathematician, is born into an Ulster Scots family on July 7, 1823 at the Rectory of Templecarne (Aghnahoo), just south of Pettigo, County Donegal. He has been co-credited, along with John William Stubbs, with introducing the geometric concept of inversive geometry.

Ingram enters Trinity College, Dublin on October 13, 1837. He is elected a Scholar of Trinity College in 1840, graduates with a BA in mathematics in 1842, and is awarded an MA in 1850. In 1852 he becomes a professor of oratory at Trinity and writes extensively on Shakespeare. He shows considerable promise in both mathematics and classics and achieves early popularity as a poet. He has a distinguished career at Trinity, spanning over fifty-five years, as a student, fellow and professor, successively of Oratory, English Literature, Jurisprudence and Greek, subsequently becoming the College Librarian and ultimately its Vice Provost.

One evening in March 1843 Ingram writes a poem for which he is best remembered, a political ballad called “The Memory of the Dead” in honour of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 led by the Society of United Irishmen. The poem is published anonymously on April 1, 1843 in Thomas Davis‘s The Nation newspaper although its authorship is an open secret in Dublin. It is set to music for voice and piano in 1845 by John Edward Pigot and becomes a popular Irish nationalist anthem. It is one of the best-known of Irish Republican songs and is often played by the piper at Republican funerals.

In 1847 Ingram helps to found the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland. His early economic writings deal mainly with the Poor Law, which in theory is supposed to provide relief for the poor but in reality does little to alleviate the distress in Ireland. Strongly influenced by the French sociologist Auguste Comte, he rejects the more isolated approach of classical economics which builds on the assumption that people try to do the best they can. Instead he seeks to develop a unified theory of economics along the lines of Comtean positivist philosophy, which seeks ways for economic policies to contribute to the good of society. His writings on this topic include the essay “Present Position and Prospects of Political Economy” (1878) and A History of Political Economy (1888).

John Kells Ingram dies on May 1, 1907 in his home at 38 Upper Mount Street, Dublin, where he had lived since 1884. He is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery.