Irish Scientists and Engineers
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Birr Castle Archives |
William Molyneux (1656-1698)
Molyneux founded the Dublin Philosophical Society in 1683, invented
a sundial mounted telescope and wrote the first treatise on optics
to be published in English. |
Nicholas Callan (1799-1864)
The Reverend Nicholas Callan was Professor of Natural Philosophy
at Maynooth College from 1826 and remained in the post until his
death in 1864. His most notable contribution to electrical science
was the Induction Coil, the forerunner of the modern Step-up Voltage
Transformer. The invention of the induction coil later made it possible
to produce X-rays. To supply electric current for his researches
Callan produced a cast iron/zinc battery which was manufactured
commercially and called the Maynooth Battery. He also constructed
electric motors and even drew up plans for a battery-driven train.
He was a contemporary of Charles Parsons' father, the Third Earl
of Rosse, who had a position on the Board of Visitors to Maynooth
College. A student yarn relates how Callan called to Birr to see
the telescopes, but for some reason was not admitted. When the Third
Earl later visited Maynooth to see the induction coil, Callan sent
his respects, but suggested that the noble lord should return to
Birr to view the coil through his giant telescope! He was an eccentric
character who was said to have used his students in his experiments
to test the strength of electric voltage. Fortunately, there were
no fatalities but he did manage to render a future Archbishop of
Dublin unconscious. After this mishap he experimented with chickens.
Maynooth College has a museum dedicated to the work and life of
this priest scientist. |
Edward Cooper (1798-1863)
Ordered the first large telescope from Thomas Grubb and published
a "Catalogue of stars near the Ecliptic" between 1851 and 1856,
which gave the approximate position of 60,000 stars. Up to that
time less than 9000 stars had had their positions catalogued. |
Humphrey Lloyd (1800-1881)
Best known for this work on terrestrial magnetism, he set up a
magnetic observatory to investigate the Earth's magnetic field in
TCD and invented several instruments. He made two major contributions
to the physics of light, confirming Hamiltions prediction of conical
refraction and showing that a change of phase occurs when light
is reflected by a mirror. |
Thomas Grubb (1806-1878) |
Howard Grubb (1844-1931)
These men became Ireland's most successful scientific instrument
makers, specialising in telescope making and optical engineering,
which they supplied to every continent in the world. |
William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865)
Professor of astronomy at Trinity College Dublin, and Royal Astronomer
of Ireland. Renowned as Ireland's greatest mathematician, he predicted
the phenomenon of conical refraction and made optics a mathematical
science based on general principles which he compared directly with
his generalised principle of mechanics. |
George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903)
Advocated the wave theory of light, was the first to explain the
meaning of Fraunhofer lines in the spectrum of the sun and pioneered
the study of fluorescense. |
John Tyndall (1820-1893)
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Birr Castle Archives |
Developed the Tyndall effect, the scattering of
light by particles of matter which cause the sky to appear blue
in colour. A popular public lecturer,he was the successor to Michael
Faraday at the Royal Institution in London. |
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)
William Thomson was born in Belfast in 1824. He was one of the
most eminent and prolific of Victorian scientists. His wide ranging
contributions to physics and engineering were contained in over
600 papers and numerous patents, for example, in submarine telegraphy.
He was knighted and made Baron Kelvin of Largs. Despite being an
important establishment figure and Cambridge educated, he preferred
to keep away from London and Oxbridge, and remained in Glasgow,
where he was active well up until his death in 1907. He still considered
himself an Irishman after his family moved to Glasgow in 1832. His
life-long correspondence with George Gabriel Stokes, another emigre
Irishman, is a renowned dialogue between two great minds. He is
immortalised in the modern unit of temperature: the Kelvin. |
George Johnstone Stoney (1826-1911)
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Birr Castle Archives |
He is best remembered for introducing the term "electron"
to science. Employed by the Third Earl of Rosse between 1848 and
1850, he later became Professor of Natural Philosophy at Queens
College Galway. He devised a new form of spectroscope and invented
the heliostat which was an instrument to keep steady and reflect
a beam of sunlight for optical experiments. |
John Philip Holland (1840-1914)
John Philip Holland was born in Co. Clare, educated in Limerick
and taught in Irish schools until he emigrated to the United States
in 1873. He was a schoolteacher in Paterson, New Jersey until the
Irish Fenian Society offered him the financial support he needed
to build his submersible vessel, the forerunner of the modern submarine.
The society hoped to use submarines against England but the Fenian
Ram, a small submarine, had limited success on a test run. Holland
later set up a company and received a contract from the U.S. Navy
to build a submarine. This time he was successful and his design,
Holland, was also bought by the English, Japanese and Russian Navies.
One of his last inventions was an apparatus to enable sailors to
escape from damaged submarines. His final years were marked by litigation
with his financial backers and he died in relative poverty. |
Agnes Mary Clerke (1842-1907)
Published the "Popular History of Astronomy during the 19th century
" in 1885, which is still regarded as an authoritative account. |
Margaret Huggins nee Murray (1848-1916)
Married Sir William Huggins and collaborated with him in stellar
spectroscopic research, particularly line spectra and the red shift
effect. Their work was published in the "Atlas of Representative
Stellar Spectra" in 1899. She was a close friend of Agnes Clerke. |
George Francis Fitzgerald (1851-1901)
George Francis Fitzgerald was the Professor of Physics in Trinity
College Dublin from 1881 to 1901. He was acknowledged as the leader
of a distinguished international group of physicists called "The
Maxwellians". As a professor at Trinity College, he was "the idol
of the undergraduates and hope of the older men" and inspired many
others (such as Thomas Preston) to great things. He was the first
to suggest a suitable method of producing radio waves which helped
in the development of wireless telegraphy. He is remembered mainly
for his theory, the Fitzgerald-Lorentz Contraction which was a significant
step towards Einstein's Theory of Relativity. He was influential
in the establishment of technical education in Ireland and promoted
the combination of theoretical and practical knowledge. At a lecture
on the compound steam turbine and the turbo electric generator delivered
in Dublin in 1888, Charles Parsons acknowledged his debt to Prof.
Fitzgerald "for his valuable assistance in the development of the
dynamo and motor". Fitzgerald had a versatile mind and wide ranging
skills; his constant enthusiasm and generosity resulted in continuous
overwork which no doubt contributed to his untimely death at the
age of 50. |
William Wilson (1851-1908)
Set up a observatory at Daramona in Co. Westmeath where he determined
the heat of the sun and made photographic studies of nebulae and
star clusters. |
Thomas Preston (1860 -1900)
Made important contributions to spectroscopy including the discovery
of the anomalous Zeeman effect, the effect of a magnetic field on
the light emitted by atoms. He published important text books on
the theory of light and heat. |
Harry Ferguson (1884-1960)
Henry George Ferguson was the son of a Co. Down farmer. He left
school at the age of fourteen and set up a car and cycle repair
business in Belfast in 1901. He was interested in aviation and built
his own aeroplane but it was in the design of farm equipment he
was to find fame and fortune. He developed a mechanical plough that
could be attached to any tractor but decided that the production
of a vehicle of his design was the only way to do full justice to
his plough. The Ferguson tractor was introduced in 1936. In 1939
Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company wished to buy the Ferguson
patents, Ferguson refused but the compromise was to set up the Ford
Ferguson tractor partnership, a gentleman's agreement that was to
end up in court in 1950. He was a strong willed man, a perfectionist
obsessed with punctuality and cleanliness. His later years were
plagued with failing health and insomnia and he died of an overdose
of drugs in his estate of Abbots wood, in Gloucestershire, in 1960.
The Ferguson tractor is one of the icons of practical, efficient
design in the twentieth century, and examples are still prized and
used everywhere. |
William Monck (1888-1915)
The first person to make measurements of starlight using photoelectric
cells from his observatory in Dublin. He also worked on the spectra
and colour of stars, anticipating the discovery of giant and dwarf
stars. |
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