seamus dubhghaill

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Death of Caitlín Maude, Poet, Actress & Language Revival Activist

Caitlín Maude, Irish language poet, language revival activist, and actress, dies in County Dublin on June 6, 1982. She is also well-known for her campaigns to improve the lives of women in Ireland.

Maude is born on May 22, 1941, in Casla, County Galway, and reared in the Irish language. Her mother, Máire Nic an Iomaire, is a school teacher, and she receives her primary education from her on a small island off the coast of Rosmuc. Her father, John Maude, is from Cill Bhriocáin township near Rosmuc. She attends secondary school at Coláiste Chroí Mhuire, Spiddal, an all-Irish language school in County Galway. She later credits one of her Irish language teachers there, Sister Ailbhe, as an early influence in cultivating her writing confidence.

Maude attends University College Galway, where she studies English, Irish, French, and Mathematics. She becomes a teacher, working in schools in Counties Kildare, Mayo, and Wicklow. She also works in other capacities in London and Dublin.

Maude begins writing modern literature in Irish in secondary school and develops a rhythm of poetry closely attuned to the rhythms of the Conamara Theas dialect of Connacht Irish, spoken in her native district. Though not conventionally religious, she admits in an interview that she has a deep interest in spirituality and that this has left its mark on her poetry. She is noted as a highly effective reciter of her own verse. Géibheann is the best-known of her poems, and is studied at Leaving Certificate Higher Level Irish in the Republic of Ireland. A posthumous collected edition, Caitlín Maude, Dánta, is published in 1984, Caitlín Maude: file in 1985 in Ireland and Italy, and Coiscéim in 1985.

Maude is widely known as an actress. She acts at the university, at An Taibhdhearc in Galway and the Damer Theatre in Dublin, and is particularly successful in a production of An Triail by Máiréad Ní Ghráda at the Damer Theatre in 1964. She plays the protagonist, Máire Ní Chathasaigh, an unmarried mother who experiences family rejection, a stay in a Magdalene laundry, and ultimately murders her infant child followed by suicide. In 2017, Former Irish Minister For Justice Máire Geoghegan-Quinn cites this performance as “pathbreaking”: “Caitlín Maude played the role, when nobody talked about the issue and when, as we know, women were still devalued, still caricatured, still incarcerated and disenfranchised if they became mothers out of wedlock.” Maude herself is a playwright and co-authors An Lasair Choille with poet Michael Hartnett.

Maude is very active in the  Celtic Revival. She founds An Bonnán Buí, an Irish-speaking social club in the 1970s in Dublin. As a member of the Dublin Metropolitan Gaelgeoir community, she is active in many direct action campaigns by the language revival organization Gluaiseacht Chearta Sibhialta na Gaeltachta, including the campaign that forces the Irish State to establish a Gaelscoil (Irish-medium primary school) Scoil Santain in the suburb of Tallaght, County Dublin. A second Irish language school, Scoil Chaitlin Maude, opens in Tallaght in 1985 shortly after her death. It begins as a two-room school with 35 children and has grown to a 16 room new building serving 345 children as of 2023.

Maude is also a distinguished sean-nós singer. She makes one album in this genre, Caitlín, released in 1975 on Gael Linn Records and now available as a CD. It contains both traditional songs and a selection of readings of her poetry.

Maude marries Cathal Ó Luain in 1969. They have one child Caomhán, their son.

Maude dies of complications from cancer on June 6, 1982, at the age of 41. She is buried in Bohernabreena graveyard, which overlooks the city from the Wicklow Mountains.

In 2001, a new writers’ centre in Galway is named after her: Ionad Scríbhneoirí Chaitlín Maude, Gaillimh.

Since Maude’s death, critics in several languages have continued to study her literary works. Irish writer and The Irish Times columnist Michael Harding cites her as one of a few examples of groundbreaking women to “spin the hurt and wound of their oppression, and weave new loves songs and laments.” Irish Studies professor Sarah McKibben notes that Maude’s innovation in the poem represents an instance of recent Irish writers transgressing “literary, nationalistic, sociolinguistic and gender norms to craft new ways of writing in Irish.”

According to Louis de Paor, “Although no collection of her work was published during her lifetime, Caitlín Maude had a considerable influence on Irish language poetry and poets, including Máirtín Ó Direáin, Micheál Ó hAirtnéide, Tomás Mac Síomóin, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. That influence is a measure of the dramatic force of her personality, her exemplary ingenuity and commitment to the language, and her ability as a singer to embody the emotional disturbance at the heart of a song. Her collected poems are relatively slight, including incomplete drafts and fragments, but reveal a poetic voice confident of its own authority, drawing on the spoken language of the Connemara Gaeltacht but rarely on its conventions of oral composition or, indeed, on precedents in Irish poetry in either language. The best of her work is closer to the American poetry of the 1960s in its use of looser forms that follow the rhythms of the spoken word and the sense of the poem as direct utterance without artifice, a technique requiring a high degree of linguistic precision and formal control.”

Maude’s work has also been translated into English and Spanish. Spanish language critic Pura Coloma notes that Maude’s work played a role in preserving Connemaran culture, as she “utilizes her own style to replicate the deep rhythms and tonalities of the regional voice.”


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Death of Edward Hutchinson Synge, Irish Physicist

Irish physicist Edward Hutchinson Synge dies in a Dublin nursing home on May 26, 1957. He publishes a complete theoretical description of the near-field scanning optical microscope, an instrument used in nanotechnology, several decades before it is experimentally developed. He never completes university yet does significant original research in both microscopy and telescopy. He is the first to apply the principle of scanning in imaging, which later becomes important in a wide range of technologies including television, radar, and scanning electron microscopy.

Synge is born on June 1, 1890, in south Dublin, to Edward Synge and Ellen Frances Price. He is familiarly known as “Hutchie.” He is the nephew of playwright John Millington Synge and the older brother of distinguished mathematician and theoretical physicist John Lighton Synge who edits the collected works of Sir William Rowan Hamilton at Synge’s urging. He and brother John are great-great-great-grandsons of Irish bishop Hugh Hamilton. He is also the uncle of the mathematician Cathleen Synge Morawetz. Throughout his life he is very physically active, pursuing walking, cycling, swimming and sailing. In his later life, he takes up painting and is quite good at it.

In 1908, Synge enters Trinity College Dublin (TCD) to study Mathematics and Old Irish. For three years he is a brilliant student and wins several prizes and a Foundation Scholarship in mathematics in 1910. At the end of his third year, he comes into an inheritance from his uncle John Millington Synge, and in 1913 he drops out of university.

Starting in 1928, with encouragement from Albert Einstein, Synge launches on a period of intense productivity during which he lays the foundation for new kinds of microscopes and telescopes. Nobody, including his famous brother John, appreciates his achievements at the time. His work is overlooked for decades, but is now better-known thanks to the book The Life and Works of Edward Hutchinson Synge published by Living Edition in 2012.

On April 22, 1928, Synge writes to Einstein about an idea he has for a new microscopic imaging method in which an optical field scattered from a tiny gold particle can be used as a radically new light source. Einstein replies that although Synge’s method appears essentially unworkable, the basic ideas seem correct and he should publish his research.

There follows a remarkable period from 1928 to 1932 in which Synge produces all of his key works which he publishes in the Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. Remarkably, he does all of this work alone, without a laboratory, and while living at his home in Dundrum in the suburbs of Dublin. By 1932 he has laid out the theory of the near-field microscope and his description is incredibly accurate.

The idea is ahead of its time. In 1956, a similar theory is developed by John A. O’Keefe and in 1972, Eric Ash gives the first experimental demonstration of the technique using electromagnetic radiation. It is not until Synge’s original papers re-emerge in the 1980s that his priority is finally recognised.

Synge proposes a design for very large astronomical telescopes, based on multiple mirrors, an idea realised much later in Tucson, Arizona, and elsewhere. He also invents a new kind of remote sensing technique using searchlights. Today this is known as Lidar and uses pulsed lasers.

According to the people who know him best, Synge suffers from what today would be called Asperger syndrome. Becoming increasingly socially isolated, he drops out of university in 1913 and works alone without any support from the academic community until all work stops in 1932. In 1936, he has a mental breakdown and is committed to a Dublin nursing home where he remains until his death on May 26, 1957. He is buried with his parents in Dublin’s Mount Jerome Cemetery, with only a few relatives attending. It is much later that his niece, Cathleen Synge Morawetz, arranges to have “Scientist and Inventor” inscribed on the gravestone.


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Birth of Irish Physicist George Johnstone Stoney

George Johnstone Stoney FRS, Irish physicist, is born on February 15, 1826, at Oakley Park, near Birr, County Offaly, in the Irish Midlands. He is most famous for introducing the term “electron” as the “fundamental unit quantity of electricity.” He introduces the concept, though not the word, as early as 1874, initially naming it “electrine,” and the word itself comes in 1891. He publishes around 75 scientific papers during his lifetime.

Stoney is the son of George Stoney and Anne (née Bindon Blood). His only brother is Bindon Blood Stoney, who becomes chief engineer of the Dublin Port and Docks Board. The Stoney family is an old-established Anglo-Irish family. During the time of the famine (1845–52), when land prices plummet, the family property is sold to support his widowed mother and family. He attends Trinity College Dublin (TCD), graduating with a BA degree in 1848. From 1848 to 1852 he works as an astronomy assistant to William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, at Birr Castle, County Offaly, where Parsons had built the world’s largest telescope, the 72-inch Leviathan of Parsonstown. Simultaneously he continues to study physics and mathematics and is awarded an MA by TCD in 1852.

From 1852 to 1857, Stoney is professor of physics at Queen’s College Galway. From 1857 to 1882, he is employed as Secretary of the Queen’s University of Ireland, an administrative job based in Dublin. In the early 1880s, he moves to the post of superintendent of Civil Service Examinations in Ireland, a post he holds until his retirement in 1893. He continues his independent scientific research throughout his decades of non-scientific employment duties in Dublin. He also serves for decades as honorary secretary and then vice-president of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS), a scientific society modeled after the Royal Society of London and, after his move to London in 1893, he serves on the council of that society as well. Additionally, he intermittently serves on scientific review committees of the British Association for the Advancement of Science from the early 1860s.

Stoney publishes seventy-five scientific papers in a variety of journals, but chiefly in the journals of the Royal Dublin Society. He makes significant contributions to cosmic physics and to the theory of gases. He estimates the number of molecules in a cubic millimeter of gas, at room temperature and pressure, from data obtained from the kinetic theory of gases. His most important scientific work is the conception and calculation of the magnitude of the “atom of electricity.” In 1891, he proposes the term “electron” to describe the fundamental unit of electrical charge, and his contributions to research in this area lays the foundations for the eventual discovery of the particle by J. J. Thomson in 1897.

Stoney’s scientific work is carried out in his spare time. A heliostat he designed is in the Science Museum Group collection. He is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June 1861.

Stoney proposes the first system of natural units in 1881. He realizes that a fixed amount of charge is transferred per chemical bond affected during electrolysis, the elementary charge e, which can serve as a unit of charge, and that combined with other known universal constants, namely the speed of light c and the Newtonian constant of gravitation G, a complete system of units can be derived. He shows how to derive units of mass, length, time and electric charge as base units. Due to the form in which Coulomb’s law is expressed, the constant 4πε0 is implicitly included, ε0 being the vacuum permittivity.

Like Stoney, Max Planck independently derives a system of natural units (of similar scale) some decades after him, using different constants of nature.

Hermann Weyl makes a notable attempt to construct a unified theory by associating a gravitational unit of charge with the Stoney length. Weyl’s theory leads to significant mathematical innovations, but his theory is generally thought to lack physical significance.

Stoney marries his cousin, Margaret Sophia Stoney, by whom he has had two sons and three daughters. One of his sons, George Gerald Stoney FRS, is a scientist. His daughter Florence Stoney OBE is a radiologist while his daughter Edith is considered to be the first woman medical physicist. His most scientifically notable relative is his nephew, the Dublin-based physicist George Francis FitzGerald. He is second cousin of the grandfather of Ethel Sara Turing, mother of Alan Turing.

After moving to London, Stoney lives first at Hornsey Rise, north London, before moving to 30 Chepstow Crescent, Notting Hill, West London. In his later years illness confines him to a single floor of the house, which is filled with books, papers, and scientific instruments, often self-made. He dies at his home in Notting Hill, on July 5, 1911. His cremated ashes are buried in St. Nahi’s Church, Dundrum, Dublin.

Stoney receives an honorary Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) from the University of Dublin in June 1902. Also in 1902, he is elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society. The street that he lived on in Dundrum is later renamed Stoney Road in his memory.

Craters on Mars and the Moon are named in his honour.


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Death of T. K. Whitaker, Economist, Politician and Civil Servant

Thomas Kenneth Whitaker, Irish economist, politician, diplomat and civil servant, dies in Blackrock, Dublin, on January 9, 2017, a month after his 100th birthday. He serves as Secretary of Ireland’s Department of Finance from 1956 to 1969, as Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland from 1969 to 1976 and as a Senator from 1977 to 1982, after being nominated by the Taoiseach. He is considered one of the most influential civil servants in the history of the Irish State, with his economic policies greatly influencing the development of modern Ireland.

Whitaker is born in Rostrevor, a small town in the south of County Down, to Roman Catholic parents on December 8, 1916, and is reared in Drogheda, County Louth, in modest circumstances. Neither of his parents are from Ulster. His mother, Jane O’Connor, comes from Ballyguirey East, Labasheeda, County Clare. His father, Edward Whitaker, hails from County Westmeath and is assistant manager of a linen mill. He receives his primary and secondary education at the local CBS in Drogheda. He studies mathematics, Celtic studies and Latin by correspondence course at University of London, and is awarded external degrees in economics: a bachelor’s degree in 1941 and a master’s degree in 1952.

In 1956, Whitaker is appointed Secretary of the Department of Finance, at the age of thirty-nine. His appointment takes place at a time when Ireland’s economy is in deep depression. Economic growth is non-existent, inflation apparently insoluble, unemployment rife, living standards low and emigration at a figure not far below the birth rate. He believes that free trade, with increased competition and the end of protectionism, will become inevitable and that jobs will have to be created by a shift from agriculture to industry and services. He forms a team of officials within the department which produce a detailed study of the economy, culminating in a plan recommending policies for improvement. The plan is accepted by the government and is transformed into a white paper which becomes known as the First Programme for Economic Expansion, and quite unusually is published with his name attached in November 1958. The programme becomes known as the “Grey Book” which many argue brings the stimulus of foreign investment into the Irish economy. However, other reforms such as the Department of Industry and Commerce‘s export profits tax relief introduced in 1956, are opposed by Whitaker.

In 1977, Taoiseach Jack Lynch nominates Whitaker as a member of the 14th Seanad. He serves as a Senator from 1977 to 1981, where he sits as an independent member.

In 1981, Whitaker is nominated to the 15th Seanad by Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, where he serves until 1982. FitzGerald also appoints him to chair a Committee of Inquiry into the Irish penal system, and he chairs a Parole Board or Sentence Review Group for several years.

Whitaker also serves as Chancellor of the National University of Ireland (NUI) from 1976 to 1996. He was also President of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and as such, a member of the Board of Governors and Guardians of the National Gallery of Ireland, from 1985 to 1987. He has a very strong love for the Irish language throughout his career and the collection of Irish poetry, An Duanaire: Poems of the Dispossessed 1600–1900, edited by Seán Ó Tuama and Thomas Kinsella is dedicated to Whitaker. From 1995 to 1996 he chairs the Constitution Review Group, an independent expert group established by the government, which publishes its report in July 1996.

Whitaker receives many national and international honours and tributes for his achievements during his lifetime, most notably the conferral of “Irishman of the 20th Century” in 2001 and Greatest Living Irish Person in 2002. In November 2014, the Institute of Banking confers an Honorary Fellowship on him and creates an annual T. K. Whitaker Scholarship in his name. In April 2015, he is presented with a lifetime achievement award by University College Dublin‘s Economics Society for his outstanding contribution to Ireland’s economic policy.

In November 2016, to mark his centenary year, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council acknowledges Whitaker’s “outstanding and progressive contribution to Irish public service and to society.” The Cathaoirleach of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Cormac Devlin, presents a special award to Whitaker which is accepted by Ken Whitaker on behalf of his father.

Whitaker marries Nora Fogarty in 1941 and they have six children. After his wife’s death in 1994, he remarries, to Mary Moore in 2005. The couple is invited to Áras an Uachtaráin in 2006 for his 90th birthday by the President of Ireland Mary McAleese. Mary Moore Whitaker dies in 2008. T. K. Whitaker turns 100 in December 2016 and dies a month later on January 9, 2017, having survived both of his wives. He is buried at Shanganagh Cemetery, Shankill, Dublin.

The main administrative building in Dundalk Institute of Technology is named after him, the T.K. Whitaker Building. Whitaker Square in the Grand Canal Dock area of Dublin 2 is named in his honour. The offices of the Economic and Social Research Institute are located on the square.


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Birth of Éamon de Valera, Third President of Ireland

Éamon de Valera, Irish politician and patriot, is born George de Valero on October 14, 1882, in Lennox Hill, a neighborhood on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. He serves as Taoiseach (1932–48, 1951–54, 1957–59) and President of Ireland (1959–73). An active revolutionary from 1913, he becomes president of Sinn Féin in 1917 and founds the Fianna Fáil party in 1926. In 1937, he makes his country a sovereign state, renamed Ireland, or Éire. His academic attainments also inspire wide respect. He becomes chancellor of the National University of Ireland in 1921.

De Valera is the son of Catherine Coll, who is originally from Bruree, County Limerick, and Juan Vivion de Valera, described on the birth certificate as a Spanish artist born in 1853. His father dies when he is two years old. He Is then sent to his mother’s family in County Limerick, and studies at the local national school and at Blackrock College, Dublin. He graduates from the Royal University of Ireland and becomes a teacher of mathematics and an ardent supporter of the Irish language revival. In 1913, he joins the Irish Volunteers, which had been organized to resist opposition to Home Rule for Ireland.

In the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, de Valera commands an occupied building and is the last commander to surrender. Because of his American birth, he escapes execution by the British but is sentenced to penal servitude. Released in 1917 but arrested again and deported in May 1918 to England, where he is imprisoned, he is acclaimed by the Irish as the chief survivor of the uprising and in October 1917 is elected president of the Irish republican and democratic socialist Sinn Féin political party, which wins three-fourths of all the Irish constituencies in December 1918.

After a dramatic escape from HM Prison Lincoln in February 1919, de Valera goes in disguise to the United States, where he collects funds. He returns to Ireland before the Irish War of Independence ends with the truce that takes effect on July 11, 1921, and appoints plenipotentiaries to negotiate in London. He repudiates the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 6, 1921, that they signed to form the Irish Free State, however, primarily because it imposes an oath of allegiance to the British crown.

After Dáil Éireann ratifies the treaty by a small majority in 1922, de Valera supports the republican resistance in the ensuing Irish Civil War. W. T. Cosgrave’s Irish Free State ministry imprisons him, but he is released in 1924 and then organizes a republican opposition party that does not sit in Dáil Éireann. In 1927, however, he persuades his followers to sign the oath of allegiance as “an empty political formula,” and his new Fianna Fáil (“Soldiers of Destiny”) party then enters the Dáil, demanding abolition of the oath of allegiance, of the governor-general, of the Seanad Éireann (senate) as then constituted, and of land-purchase annuities payable to Great Britain. The Cosgrave ministry is defeated by Fianna Fáil in 1932, and de Valera, as head of the new ministry, embarks quickly on severing connections with Great Britain. He withholds payment of the land annuities, and an “economic war” results. Increasing retaliation by both sides enables de Valera to develop his program of austere national self-sufficiency in an Irish-speaking Ireland while building up industries behind protective tariffs. In the new Constitution of Ireland, ratified by referendum in 1937, the Irish Free State becomes Ireland, a sovereign, independent democracy tenuously linked with the British Commonwealth (under the Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936) only for purposes of diplomatic representation.

De Valera’s prestige is enhanced by his success as president of the council of the League of Nations in 1932 and of its assembly in 1938. He also enters negotiations with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in which he guarantees that he will never allow Ireland to be used as a base for attacking Britain in the event of war. This culminates in the Anglo-Irish defense agreement of April 1938, whereby Britain relinquishes the naval bases of Cobh, Berehaven, and Lough Swilly (retained in a defense annex to the 1921 treaty), and in complementary finance and trade treaties that end the economic war. This makes possible de Valera’s proclamation in September 1939, upon the outbreak of World War II, that Ireland will remain neutral and will resist attack from any quarter. In secret, however, de Valera also authorizes significant military and intelligence assistance to both the British and the Americans throughout the war. He realizes that a German victory will imperil Ireland’s independence, of which neutrality is the ultimate expression. By avoiding the burdens and destruction of the war, de Valera achieves a relative prosperity for Ireland in comparison with the war-torn countries of Europe, and he retains office in subsequent elections.

In 1948, a reaction against the long monopoly of power and patronage held by de Valera’s party enables the opposition, with the help of smaller parties, to form an interparty government under John A. Costello. Ironically, this precarious coalition collapses within three years after Ireland becomes a republic by means of the repeal of the Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936 and the severance of all ties with the British Commonwealth, an act de Valera had avoided. De Valera resumes office until 1954, when he appeals unsuccessfully for a fresh mandate, and Costello forms his second interparty ministry. No clearly defined difference now exists between the opposing parties in face of rising prices, continued emigration, and a backward agriculture. De Valera claims, however, that a strong single-party government is indispensable and that all coalitions must be weak and insecure. On this plea he obtains, in March 1957, the overall majority that he demands.

In 1959, de Valera agrees to stand as a candidate for the presidency. He resigns his position as Taoiseach and leader of the Fianna Fáil party. In June he is elected president, and is reelected in 1966. He retires to a nursing home near Dublin in 1973 and dies there on August 29, 1975.

De Valera’s career spans the dramatic period of Ireland’s modern cultural and national revolution. As an anticolonial leader, a skillful constitutionalist, and a symbol of national liberation, he dominates Ireland in the half century following the country’s independence.

(From: “Éamon de Valera, president of Ireland,” Encyclopedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com, last updated August 14, 2025)


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Birth of Pádraig de Brún, Catholic Priest & Linguist

Pádraig de Brún, also called Patrick Joseph Monsignor Browne, a Roman Catholic priest, linguist, Classicist, and Celticist, is born in Grangemockler, County Tipperary, on October 13, 1889. With regard to his contribution to modern literature in Irish, he, who Louis de Paor terms in 2014 “one of the most distinguished literary figures of his time,” is also a writer of Irish poetry in the Irish language and the literary translator of many of the greatest works of the Western canon into Modern Irish. He serves as President of University College, Galway (UCG), and is known in friendly and informal circles as Paddy Browne.

De Brún is the son of a primary school teacher, Maurice Browne. He is educated locally, at Rockwell College, Cashel, and at Holy Cross College, Drumcondra, Dublin (at both he is tutored in mathematics by Éamon de Valera). In 1909, he is awarded a BA from the Royal University of Ireland. He is awarded an MA degree by the National University of Ireland, and wins a traveling scholarship in mathematics and mathematical physics, enabling him to pursue further studies in Paris. He is ordained as a Catholic priest at the Irish College in Paris in 1913, the same year he earns his D.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Paris under Émile Picard.

After a period at the University of Göttingen, de Brún is appointed professor of mathematics at St. Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth, in 1914. In April 1945, he is elected by the Senate of the National University of Ireland to succeed John Hynes as President of University College, Galway, an office he holds until his retirement in 1959. His friend Thomas MacGreevy refers to de Brún as, “Rector Magnificus,” and praises his, “Olympian capacity to appreciate the most exalted works of art and literature, ancient and modern.”

The School of Mathematics, Mathematical Physics and Statistics is based in Áras de Brún, a building named in de Brún‘s honour. He subsequently becomes Chairman of the Arts Council of Ireland, a position he holds until his death in 1960. He also serves as chairman of the Council of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS).

De Brún is close friend of 1916 Easter Rising leader Seán Mac Diarmada and is deeply affected by the latter’s execution.

De Brún was a prolific writer of Irish poetry in the Irish language, including the well-known poem “Tháinig Long ó Valparaiso.” He further translates into Modern Irish many great works of the Western canon, including Homer‘s Iliad and Odyssey, Sophocles‘ Antigone and Oedipus Rex, and Plutarch‘s Parallel Lives, as well as French stage plays by Jean Racine and Dante Alighieri‘s Divine Comedy. With regards to his importance to modern literature in Irish, he is recently termed “one of the most distinguished literary figures of his time.”

The French Government awards de Brún the title of Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur in 1949, and in 1956, the order Al Merito della Repubblica Italiana is conferred on him by the President of Italy. He is created a Domestic Prelate (a Monsignor) by Pope Pius XII in 1950.

De Brún purchases land at Dunquin in the Dingle Peninsula Gaeltacht. In the 1920s, he also builds a house there known as Tigh na Cille, where his sister and her children often visit and stay at length. Through his literary mentorship of his niece, the future poet Máire Mhac an tSaoi, he has been credited with having an enormous influence upon the future development of modern literature in Irish.

After suffering a heart attack at his house at Seapoint, Dún Laoghaire, into which he had recently moved, de Brún dies on June 5, 1960, in St. Vincent’s nursing home, Leeson Street, Dublin.


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Death of David Bailie Warden, United Irishman & Diplomat

David Bailie Warden, United Irishman, diplomat, and bibliographer, dies in Paris on October 9, 1845, where he had lived for the previous thirty-eight years.

Warden is born in the townland of Ballycastle, near Newtownards in County Down, the eldest among three sons of Robert Warden, tenant farmer, and Elizabeth Warden (née Bailie). Educated locally, he studies for the Presbyterian ministry, despite being told by a clergyman that he is a “blockhead.” Entering the University of Glasgow, he wins a silver medal for his work on barometers, receives a certificate in midwifery, and graduates MA in April 1797. Returning to Ireland, he accepts a provisional license to preach from the Presbytery of Bangor, County Down, and becomes a popular preacher in the region. A patriot in politics, he joins the United Irishmen. Because of this a warrant was issued for his arrest in 1798 and he surrenders himself to the government. Banished from Ireland, he decides to emigrate to the United States and writes a pamphlet explaining his decision, A farewell address to the junto of the presbytery of Bangor, in which he accuses the church leaders of “meanness, injustice and cruelty.”

On his arrival in New York City in 1799, Warden decides to abandon his career as a clergyman and become a teacher. Interested in mathematics, science and literature, he becomes principal of the Columbia Academy in Kinderhook, New York, and is appointed in 1801 the head tutor at Kingston Academy in Ulster County, New York. Employed by General John Armstrong, Jr. to teach his children, he makes useful connections in American society. He becomes a citizen in 1804 and is asked to accompany Armstrong to France when he is appointed ambassador. Arriving in Paris in 1806, he gives strong support to Armstrong and defends him from criticism in the American press. He is appointed acting consul in 1808, and serves as head of the legation on two occasions when Armstrong is absent. Surprisingly, despite their ties of friendship, Armstrong does not recommend Warden to succeed him permanently, and advises President Thomas Jefferson that although “honest and amiable” he is “not well qualified for business.” Stung by these comments, Warden reacts angrily and his friendship with Armstrong ends acrimoniously. As a result he is swiftly recalled from Paris.

Once back in America, Warden lobbies vigorously to be appointed French consul. Supported by Jefferson, now out of office, he returns to Paris in August 1811 having convinced the government of his credentials. Befriending the new ambassador, Joel Barlow, he soon allows pride to get the better of him. Arrogantly styling himself “consul general” after Barlow dies in December 1812, he provokes much anger and is dismissed from office on June 10, 1814. He never holds a diplomatic appointment again.

Deciding to remain in France, he resumes his scholarly activities and publishes his first book, On the Origin, Nature, Progress and Influence of Consular Establishments in 1813. A friend of many of the leading French writers and intellectuals, he also offers assistance to visiting scholars from America, providing a bridge between the European and American intellectual communities. His reputation increases with the publication of Chorographical and Statistical Description of the District of Columbia (1816) and A Statistical, Political and Historical Account of the United States of North America (3 vols., 1819). The publishers of a series, L’art de vérifier les dates, commissions him to research the volumes on North and South America in 1821. These run to ten volumes and are written over thirteen years.

Beset by financial difficulties, Warden is twice forced to sell part of his vast library to raise money. He dies on October 9, 1845, in Paris, after a long illness. He never marries.

(From: “Warden, David Bailie” by Patrick M. Geoghegan, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Death of William Thrift, Academic & Politician

William Edward Thrift, Irish academic and politician who serves as the 37th Provost of Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin University constituency from 1921 to 1937, dies in Dublin, on April 23, 1942.

Thrift was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England, on February 28, 1870, one of at least two sons and two daughters of Henry George Thrift, civil servant, and Sarah Anne Thrift (née Smith). The family moves in his childhood to Dublin, where his father is an officer in the Inland Revenue.

He is educated at The High School, Dublin, and enters Trinity College Dublin in 1889 with a second sizarship in mathematics, and commences a highly distinguished university career, scoring firsts in several examinations and winning numerous prizes. Elected fellow in mathematics and experimental science, and in mental and moral philosophy in 1896, he becomes Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at TCD from 1901 to 1929. He is awarded a Doctor of Science (DSc) in 1936. He is appointed Provost of Trinity College Dublin in 1937, serving until his death in 1942.

Thrift is also active in politics. He is elected to the House of Commons of Southern Ireland at the 1921 Irish elections, representing the Dublin University constituency. As an independent Unionist, he does not participate in the Second Dáil. He is re-elected for the same constituency at the 1922 Irish general election and becomes a member of the Third Dáil. He is re-elected at the next five general elections until 1937 when he retires from politics.

While rarely speaking on controversial issues, Thrift opposes the 1925 legislation banning divorce, which he describes as an infringement of individual and minority rights, and a betrayal of commitments made by Arthur Griffith during the Anglo-Irish Treaty debates. His capable service on various Dáil committees is recognised by his election as Leas-Ceann Comhairle (deputy speaker). A long-serving council member of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) (1902–42), he is a commissioner of charitable donations and bequests, and financial adviser to the General Synod of the Church of Ireland. He sits on the governing boards of the Erasmus Smith schools and of the Incorporated Society for Promoting Protestant Schools in Ireland.

Thrift’s portrait is painted by Leo Whelan. He marries Etta Robinson, a daughter of C. H. Robinson, a medical doctor, and they have three sons and three daughters. He dies at the provost’s house, Trinity College Dublin, on April 23, 1942. He is buried at Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harold’s Cross, County Dublin.


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Birth of John Henry MacFarland, Irish Australian University Chancellor

Sir John Henry MacFarland, Irish Australian educationist and churchman, is born in Omagh, County Tyrone, on April 19, 1851.

MacFarland is the elder son of John MacFarland, draper, and his second wife Margaret Jane, daughter of Rev. William Henry, a famous Covenanting Church minister. Both parents are devout Presbyterians, well educated, with strong intellectual interests.

MacFarland attends the local national school until he is 13 when he moves to the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. He is senior scholar in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Queen’s College, Belfast, where he is taught by John Purser. There he earns a BA in 1871 and MA in 1872. He goes on to St. John’s College, Cambridge, for three more years of undergraduate study of mathematics and physics. There he is elected a foundation scholar and earns a second BA, as 25th wrangler, in 1876. He also earns an MA there in 1879.

MacFarland teaches at Repton School in Derbyshire from 1876 to 1880. A decade later, his younger brother Robert, also a Queen’s Belfast and Cambridge mathematics graduate, also teaches at Repton.

The emissaries of the provisional council of Ormond College in the University of Melbourne are impressed with MacFarland. He negotiates a salary of £600 plus the profit from “farming” the college. On March 18, 1881, he becomes the first master of Ormond College, passing the opening-day ordeal in the presence of 440 Presbyterian grandees, clergy and their ladies.

On Sir John Madden‘s death in 1918, MacFarland becomes chancellor of the university and is knighted in 1919. He presides over a period of considerable expansion, working closely with Sir John Monash, vice-chancellor from 1923, and Sir James Barrett.

MacFarland is immensely and properly proud of his careful financial management, but the erstwhile reformers are hardly tender enough in balancing economy with humanity. The professors become increasingly restive about the limited responsibility for academic matters and allocation of resources council allows them. When the issues come to a head in 1928, MacFarland’s prestige is too much for the professoriate who have great respect for his administrative capacity, humanity and reasonableness. Even in his eighties he does not retire as chancellor, probably wisely concluding that his likely successor, Barrett, will prove to be too divisive.

In 1892, MacFarland receives and honorary LLD degree from the Royal University of Ireland.

MacFarland’s reputation as a business manager leads to his directorship from about 1905 of the National Mutual Life Association, serving as chairman from 1928, and of the Trustees Executors and Agency Company. From 1913 he represents the Trustees Executors on the Felton Bequests Committee. He is also the popular chairman from its foundation in 1908 of the Alexandra Club Co. as the members of the leading female social club prefer men to control their finances.

In his younger days MacFarland is a vigorous cyclist and walker in the Australian Alps, Tasmania and New Zealand. By the age of 40 he is spending a month each summer trout-fishing in the South Island of New Zealand. He is also a regular golfer at Royal Melbourne and belongs to the Melbourne Club.

MacFarland dies in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, on July 22, 1935. His remains are cremated following a service at Scots’ Church. The university council minutes:

“Few men in any community, and almost no man in this community, can have won such universal esteem. No evil was ever spoken of him or could be thought of in connection with him; before him evil quailed. The greatest disciple of the greatest of the Greeks called his dead master ‘our friend whom we may truly call the wisest, and the justest, and the best of all men we have ever known’. And many of us can sincerely say that of John Henry MacFarland.”

(From: “Sir John Henry MacFarland (1851-1935)” by Geoffrey Serle, Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://www.adb.anu.edu.au, 1986)


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Birth of Alexander Mitchell, Engineer & Inventor

Alexander Mitchell, Irish engineer who from 1802 is blind, is born in Dublin on April 13, 1780. He is known as the inventor of the screw-pile lighthouse.

Mitchell’s family moves to Belfast while he is a child. He receives his formal education at Belfast Academy where he excels in mathematics. He begins to notice that his eyesight is failing. By the age of 16 he can no longer read and by the age of 22 he is completely blind.

Undeterred, Mitchell borrows £100 and starts up a successful business making bricks in the Ballymacarrett area of Belfast. This enables him to start building his own houses and he completes approximately twenty in the city. It is during this period that his talent for inventing comes to the fore and he fabricates several machines for use in brickmaking and the building trade.

Mitchell patents the screw pile in 1833, for which he later gains some fame. The screw-pile is used for the erection of lighthouses and other structures on mudbanks and shifting sands, including bridges and piers. His designs and methods are employed all over the world from the Portland, Maine breakwater to bridges in Bombay. Initially it is used for the construction of lighthouses on Maplin Sands in the Thames Estuary in 1838, at Fleetwood Lancashire (UK) Morecambe Bay in 1839 and at Belfast Lough where his lighthouse is finished in July 1844.

In 1848 Mitchell is elected member of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and receives the Telford Medal the following year for a paper on his invention.

In May 1851 Mitchell moves to Cobh to lay the foundation for the Spit Bank Lighthouse. The success of these undertakings leads to the use of his invention on the breakwater at Portland, the viaduct and bridges on the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway and a broad system of Indian telegraphs.

Mitchell becomes friendly with astronomer John Thomas Romney Robinson and mathematician George Boole.

Mitchell dies at Glen Devis near Belfast on June 25, 1868, and is buried in the old Clifton graveyard in Belfast. His wife and daughter predecease him.