Mail Boat Maths: Ireland/Wales (Jul 2020)
In previous blogs here, we have surveyed Irish mathematical connections with overseas places of learning, including Cambridge and Oxford before 1900, several US areas (Caltech, Boston, Illinois), and France before 1900. This time, we finally look east to our nearest neighbour: Wales.
Third level institutions in Wales include those at Bangor, Aberysthwyth, St David's, Swansea and Cardiff. A fuller listing, with brief histories and accounting of the different names they have used over the past two centuries, is provided after the table below documenting 50+ people.
Irish maths people have worked in Welsh colleges and universities since 1872, if not earlier, and Welsh maths people have worked in Irish third level institutions since at least 1953. Numerous Irish students have pursued postgrad studies in Wales too, apparently starting with Finbarr Holland in the early 1960s.
As usual, some of the connections we mention are tenuous, and we include several people with physics and engineering leanings. However, we do not include the numerous non-Irish or non-Welsh people who did doctorates in Wales under Irish thesis advisors; they would swell the ranks quite a bit.
It's only in comparatively recent decades that flights across the Irish sea have been competitively priced. Before that, people relied on the scores of maritime routes connecting Irish ports with Welsh counterparts, not to mention nearby Liverpool. Since the 1950s, car ferries from Dublin, Wexford and Cork have brought many travellers to Wales (and beyond). Many of the older sea routes are shown in an 1891 map at SWilson's blog, including the long forgotten Greenore (Louth) / Holyhead and Waterford / Milford Haven corridors. Moreover, various routes from Dublin (and Wicklow) to Holyhead have been documented back to the 1560s.
For the first century of the time frame of interest to us below, the principal route between Dublin and Wales for academics was probably to Holyhead in NW Wales, via either the North Wall or the mail boat from Dún Laoghaire aka Dunleary (formally known as Kingstown from 1821 to 1920). The 1834 arrival of the rail corridor from central Dublin to the mail boat made the latter trip to Wales even more popular. Admittedly, most passengers were travelling to or from English destinations, but it's hardly surprising that Irish and Welsh mathematical connections developed. [Curiously, "New rail deals" is an anagram of "Ireland Wales".]
The other modern maritime routes that have been used for passengers are Cork to and from Swansea (no longer operational) and Rosslare (Wexford) to and from Pembroke or Fishguard.
As mentioned above, after the table below we sketch the histories of the principal Welsh colleges of higher education which in time became today's universities.
Please alert us to any omissions or errors.
Thanks to Olivia Bree, Jim Boyd, Graham Ellis, Ted Hurley, Robin Harte, Des MacHale, Paul O'Malley, and others for valuable input.
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1. Rev Thomas Kelly (1829-1898) was born in Dublin and was educated in Dole (Burgundy) and Avignon in France, and later in Hodder, near Stonyhurst in England. His career included stints teaching in Tullabeg / Belvedere (at least 1851-1857) / Wales / France / Limerick (1864-1872). Circa 1863 he taught (or at least wrote maths exams) at Catholic University in Dublin. |
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2. Arthur Scott (1845?-1927) was born in Clontarf, Dublin, and was educated at TCD (BA 1868, MA). He had a 55 year career at St David's College in Lampeter in Wales, also serving once at the town mayor. |
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3. Robert Genese (1848-1928) was born 8 May in Dublin, and was educated at Cambridge (St John's, 8th wrangler 1871, MA 1874). After a few years at the Training College in Carmarthen, Wales, he taught for a further 40 years at Aberystwyth. He contributed to the Educational Times, and spoke at both the 1904 and 1908 ICMs. Wikipedia / Cambridge / Aberystwyth / ICM / Edu Times |
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4. David Edwardes (1854-1940) was born 4 Dec in London, and attended Oxford (1873-1875) but dropped out and married. He then worked as an army coach, and somehow got elected to the LMS in 1879 He was admitted to TCD in 1883, was teaching in Ystrad Meurig Grammar School (about 20 kms SE of Aberystwyth) in 1885, and finally completed his education in Dublin (BA 1888, supp gold medal, Bishop Law's Prize). He also contributed to the Educational Times around this time. From 1892-1901 he taught at Bangor, but left after repeated disagreements with George Bryan (who later worked with Edgar Harper below). In 1911 he was teaching at Franciscan College in Oxfordshire, but nothing further is known about his career. Edu Times / Oxford / 1885 / LMS / TCD / Papers / Bangor / Bryan |
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5. William Johnston (1858-1924) was born in Dublin, and was educated at Queen's Belfast (BA 1975, MA 1878) and at TCD (scholar, BA 1883. His long career was spent at Aberystwyth. He wrote the book An Elementary Treatise on Analytical Geometry (1893). It is said that he and Genese did not see eye to eye. |
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6. Isabel Maddison (1869-1950) was born 13 April in Cumberland, and was educated at Cardiff and at Girton (earned BA 1892, 27th wrangler). On the recommendation of Cayley, who had taught her, she went to Bryn Mawr in the USA to study with Charlotte Scott for 2 years. She got a BSc (1893) from the University of London via external examination, and spent 1894-1895 studying in Göttingen. She then returned to Bryn Mawr and completed her PhD under Scott for the thesis "On Singular Solutions of Differential Equations of the First Order in Two Variables and the Geometrical Properties of Certain Invariants and Covariants of Their Complete Primitives" (1896). She taught there for 3 decades. Her Irish connection hinges on the fact that TCD awarded her an ad eundum BA (1907). Wikipedia / MacTutor / Agnes Scott / Ladies in Lab / Revolvy / zbMATH |
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7. Rogerson Cotter (1869-1957) was born 10 December in Milan, Italy. He grew up in Queen's County, and was educated at TCD (BA 1897, MA 1900). His career was spent teaching physics at Cardiff (1899-1900? and again around 1919), TCD (1901?-1911 or later) and QUB (1930s). TCD awarded him DSc (hon) in 1940. 1901 Census / 1911 Census / Wikipedia / Peerage / Obit |
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8. Thomas Stuart (1872-??) was born 3 November in Roosky, Gortin, south of Omagh, Tyrone. He was educated at Queen's Galway (BA 1895, MA 1896, and DSc by exam 1900) and at Cambridge (BA 1902, MA 1906?). His career was spent at Cardiff (1903-1904), Queen's Belfast (1904-1906), Woolwich (1906-1913), and then the University of Hong Kong (1913 to at least 1924), and the Univ of Southampton.. He contributed to the Educational Times. |
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9. Annie Glanville (1876-1922) was born 21 September in Dublin, and was educated at Alexandra College (RUI BA 1901). She taught at St Stephen's Green School (1902-1905) and Victoria College (1905-1908), before being appointed mathematical mistress at the Howard Gardens Municipal Secondary School in Cardiff. She died relatively young; her older brother Edwin did maths at TCD and died even younger. Award / 1901 Census / Howard Gardens / Death / Grave |
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10. Edgar Harper (1880-1916) was born 4 July in Mullafgadun, Dungannon, Tyrone, and was educated at first at TCD (BA 1902). Most unusually, he then earned an RUI BSc (1904, via private study), and an RUI Travelling Studentship (and hence MSc) in 1905. After 2 years teaching at the Royal School back in Dungannon, he secured a post at Bangor (1907-1913). During his time years there he co-authored the book Aerial Locomotion (Cambridge, 1911), a very early treatment of flying. In 1912 he successfully applied for the professor of maths physics position at UCC, a job for which Eamon de Valera was also famously considered. He held that position 1913-1915, before abandoning academia to fight for King and country. Starting with a May 1915 commission in the Royal Munster Fusiliers, it was as a member of the 8th Battalion of the South Staffordshire regiment that he died in July 1916 at the Somme offensive known as the Battle of Albert. |
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11. Mathematician and economist John G. Smith (1881-1968) was born 13 Oct in Dunmanway, Cork. As a pupil at Portora, in Fermanagh, he contributed to the Educational Times. He was educated at TCD (Scholar 1903, BA 1904, MA 1907) and at Birmingham (MComm). In 1905 he was appointed lecturer in maths at Cardiff. He then briefly taught econ at QUB, before joining the commerce staff at Birmingham in 1919. Having authored the book Organised Produce Markets (Longmans, 1922), in 1923 he was appointed Mitsui Prof of Finance there. In time, he served as vice principal, and in 1956 was awarded an honorary LLD. In the 1960s, a new building was named after him, which over the years has housed various departments within the faculty of commerce, including the econ dept for a while. 1901 Census / 1911 Census / Edu Times / 1923 / 1956 / Death |
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12. Modal logician George Hughes (1918-1994) was born 8 Jun in Waterford, and grew up there and in Scotland. He studied philosophy at Glasgow (MA 1938?) and Cambridge, and taught at Glasgow, Cardiff, and Bangor. The rest of his career was spent at the Victoria Univ (1951-1984), in Wellington, NZ. His numerous books include A New Introduction to Modal Logic (1966), now regarded by some as setting out a mathematical theory of meaning. |
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13. Gabriel Dirac (1925-1984) was born 13 Mar in Budapest, Hungary, and grew up there and in Cambridge, England. He was educated at Cambridge (BA 1946?, MA 1949) and the Univ of London (PhD 1952), his thesis on "On the Colouring of Graphs: Combinatorial Topology of Linear Complexes" being done under Richard Rado. He taught at King's College London, Vienna, Hamburg and Tech Hoch Ilmenau, before briefly serving as Erasmus Smith Prof of Maths at TCD (1964-1966). He followed that with 3 years at Swansea, and spent the rest of his career at Aarhus Univ. |
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14. Economist Ray Crotty (1925-1994) was born 22 Jan in Kilkenny, and started his career as a pig farmer. Eventually, he was educated in econ at Univ London (BSc by correspondence 1959) and LSE (MSc 1961). He then taught agricultural econ for a while at Aberystwyth, and later worked as a economic advisor. He ended his career at TCD (1982-1993) working in Gordon Foster's Systems Development programme. He did not teach stats there, despite the rumours. He was known for his lifelong opposition to Irish membership of the EEC/EU. |
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15. Theoretical physicist Roy Chisholm (1926-2015) went the other direction from Dirac above. He was born 26 November in Barnet, Herts, England, and was educated entirely at Cambridge (BA 1948, PhD 1952), his thesis on "The Calculation of S-matrix Elements and Magnetic Moments" being done under Nicholas Kemmer & Ireland's Jim Hamilton. After a few years at Glasgow (1951-1954), he moved to Cardiff (1954-1962) and then served briefly as TCD's University Professor of Natural Philosophy (1962-1965). Most of the rest of his career was spent at the University of Kent (Canterbury, 1966-1994), where he was the first prof of applied maths. |
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16, Stan Dennis was born in or around Newport, Wales, and was educated at the Univ of London (PhD 1951), his thesis on "The Application of the Relaxation Method to the Solution of Laplace's Equation in Three Dimensions with Particular reference to the Problem of the Determination of the Flow Round an Aerofoil" being done under Deryck Allen. He taught at QUB for over a decade, where he supervised 3 doctoral students. After a couple of years at Sheffield he spent the rest of his career at the Univ of Western Ontario. |
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17. Uno Öpik (1926-2005) was born 18 Oct in Tartu, Estonia. He attended the Baltic Univ in Hamburg soon after WWII, moving to Armagh in 1948 when he father Ernst Öpik became director of the observatory there. He got all his degrees from QUB (BSc 1950 & 1951, PhD 1954), his thesis on "Quantal Investigations of Certain Excitation and Ionization Processes " being done under David Bates. He worked at Bristol, Aberystwyth (1956-1960), Reading and finally settled back at QUB (1962-1986). |
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18. Paddy Kennedy (1929-1966) was born 20 Jul in Clarecastle, just south of Ennis, Clare, and was educated at first at UCC (BSc 1949,MSc 1951), winning an NUI Travelling Studentship. He taught at Aberysthwyth (1953-1954) while completing his PhD on "On the Growth of Certain Integral and Subharmonic Functions" done under Walter Hayman at Exeter, the degree being awarded in 1955 by NUI. He then taught at UCC until becoming the first prof of maths at the York University in 1963. Sadly, he died young. NUI also awarded him DSc in 1959. |
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19. Mathematical physicist John T. Lewis (1932-2004) was born 15 Apr in Swansea, Wales. He was educated at QUB (BSc 1952, PhD 1955), his thesis on "Quantal Calculations Relating to Certain Rate Processes" being done with Alex Dalgarno & David Bates. He was at Oxford until 1972, where he supervised 16 doctoral students, and then was appointed a senior professor of DIAS, where he supervised another 13 doctorates. His areas of interest included quantum measurement, Bose-Einstein condensation and large deviations theory. |
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20. Dermot McLain (1932-2004) was born 25 Mar in Coleraine, Londonderry, and was educated at QUB (BSc 1952) and Cambridge (PhD 1956). His thesis on "A Class of Locally Nilpotent Groups" was done under Philip Hall. His career was spent at Glasgow 1956-1960?), Cardiff (1960s), and at Sheffield (1971-1988), where he was director of CS services. That last institution awarded him an honorary DSc upon his retirement in 1998. He published on curve fitting as well as group theory. and McLain groups are named after him. |
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21. Theoretical physicist Jim Boyd was born 21 Jun in Larne, Antrim, and grew up there and a few miles north in Sliabhbán, Glenarm. He was educated entirely at QUB (BSc 1953, BA 1954, PhD 1957), his thesis on "The Landau-Zener Approximation in Atomic Collision Theory" being done under David Bates. After spells at Birmingham, Gen Dynamics (San Diego), Univ Maryland (College Park), UKAEA (Culham Lab), and St Andrews (1965-1968), he settled at Bangor (1968-1990), where he pioneered the use of computers in teaching applied maths, and developed plasma simulation codes. He then spent 2 decades at Essex (1990-2009), followed by research at ININ (Mexico). His interests include nonlinear plasma wave interactions, plasma radiation, ultra-relativistic laser-plasma interactions, and particle-in-cell and finite-element codes for plasmas. He has supervised over 25 doctoral students and has 7 books to his name. |
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22. Robin Harte was born on 5 May in Belfast, and was educated at TCD (BA 1960) and Cambridge (PhD 1965), his thesis on "Modules over a Banach Algebra" being done under John Williamson. After 5 years at Swansea, he spent 2 decades at UCC, supervising 3 doctorates in total. Since 1988, he has pursued research in several variable spectral and Fredholm theory, in an itinerant fashion, in various parts of the world. Along the way he has authored two books on functional analysis. Web / TCD / ResearchGate |
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23. Finbarr Holland was born 12 May in Cork city, and was educated at UCC, where he won an NUI Travelling Studentship, and at Cardiff, getting his 1964 PhD on "Contributions to Harmonic Analysis" under Lionel Cooper. A classical analyst, his career has been spent at UCC, where he supervised several theses. He was the founding president of the Irish Mathematical Society in 1977, and led the first Irish team to compete at an International Mathematics Olympiad in 1988. He is still active in the Cork Mathematical Enrichment Programme for secondary school students, which he initiated thirty years ago. |
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24. Alan Ponter was born 16 Feb in Abergavenny, Wales, and was educated at Imperial (BA 1961, PhD 1964+), and Cambridge (MA 1967). His doctoral thesis was done under TCD grad Maurice Jaswon. After brief stints at Brown Univ, Glasgow and Cambridge, he spent most of his career on the engineering staff at Leicester, where he also served as pro-vice-chancellor. His interests include mechanics, plasticity and computational methods. He has edited 7 books. |
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25. Tom McDonough was born in Castlebar, Mayo, and was educated at first at UCG (BSc 1963, MSc 1964), where he earned an NUI Travelling Studentship. His 1972 Dhil on "Some Problems in the Theory of Groups" was earned at Oxford under Graham Higman. Most of his career has been spent at Aberystwyth, and he co-edited the Proceedings of the 1973 British Combinatorial Conference. |
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26. John Lennox was born 7 Nov in Armagh and educated at Cambridge (BA 1964?, MA 1965?, PhD 1970). His doctorate on "Centrality and Permutability in Soluble Groups" was done with James Rosenblade. His career included three decades at Cardiff working in algebra and more recently he's lectured at Oxford on maths and theology. His books include Subnormal Subgroups of Groups (1987) and The Theory of Infinite Soluble Groups (2004). |
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28. David Walsh was born 9 Sep in Ballylongford, Kerry, and was educated at first at UCC (BA 1965, MA 1966), earning an NUI Travelling Studentship. His 1971 PhD on Hankel Operators and H^2 Functions" was done at Swansea under Finbarr Holland & Robin Harte. His career was spent at Maynooth, where his work in analysis included the study of approximation problems in several complex variables and integral inequalities. |
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29. Ken Jukes was born in Tipton, Staffordshire, England, and was educated at Aberystwyth (BSc 1965, PhD 1969+), his thesis on "" being done with Ivor Maddox. He was at QUB until 1975, then Sheffield Hallam, and from 1982 on at Bristol Poly (later Univ West England). He has also taught children in Sarasota, Florida. |
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30. Mehmet Orhon was born in Istanbul, Turkey and was educated at Ankara (BSc 1965) and Swansea (PhD 1969), his thesis on "Vector Norms on Modules over C(S)" being done with Robin Harte above. He spent 2 decades at METU (Ankara) and 2 more at Univ New Hampshire. |
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| 31. Richard Jones was born in Wales. He was educated at TCD (BA 1966, PhD 1970), his thesis on "A Model of the Maclaurin Spheroid in General Relativity" being done with Petros Florides. At first he worked for UKEAS Harwelll Lab, and from 1984 he has been a software consultant in Australia. | ||
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32. Rory Hearne (1942-1988?) was born somewhere in Longford. He was educated at UCD (BSc 1966) and then at Aberytwyth (stats MSc). He is believed to have worked at the CSO before settling down at An Foras Forbartha. He died relatively young. His legacy included a method, using fairly sophisticated statistical techniques, for locating stretches of the national roads that were high risk for accidents, as well as some early surveys of seat belt usage. |
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33. Tim Porter was born in Abergavenny, Wales, and was educated at Sussex (BSc 1968, DPhil 1971+), his thesis on "Homotopy from a Cech Point of View" being done under Roger Fenn. His career started at UCC, and from 1979 on he was at Bangor, until they eliminated the maths degree in 2006. He is still very active and has visited NUIG to work with Graham Ellis below. |
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34. Tony Seda was born 31 Oct in Wolverhampton, and brought up in Llandudno, Wales. He spent 7 years with the Associated Electrical Industries, as a student/graduate apprentice engineer, the last 3 of those while attending Aberystwyth (BSc 1969). His education continued at, Warwick (MSc 1970) and Bangor (1974). His thesis on "Topological Groupoids: Measures and Representations" was done under Ronnie Brown. The rest of his career was spent at UCC (1972-2000), where he supervised 3 doctorates. His 5 books include Mathematical Aspects of Logic Programming Semantics (2010). |
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35. John McWhirter was born in Newry, Down, and was educated at QUB (BSc 1970, PhD 1973), his thesis on "The Virial Theorem in Collision Theory" being done with Benno Moiseiwitsch. His career has been spent in signal processing, first at Malvern and then at Cardiff University. |
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36. Statistician and operations researcher Sally McClean was born in Belfast and educated at Oxford (MA 1970), Cardiff (MSc stats & OR 1972) and Coleraine (PhD 1976). Her thesis on "Stochastic Models of Manpower Planning Applied to Several British and Irish Firms" was done under Andrew Young. She has been at Coleraine since 1971, apart from a mid-career stint at UU Jordanstown (1992-2003). She has supervised about 40 doctorates, co-authored the book Statistical Techniques for Manpower Planning (1979), and co-edited 4 others. Her expertise spans CS too and her interests include workforce modelling, health administration, interactive architecture, and survey methodology. Wikipedia / UU / GoogleScholar |
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37. Glan Thomas was born 1 Dec in Swansea and was educated at Oxford (BA 1971, MA 1975) and at Swansea (PhD 1974+), his thesis on "Baxter Algebras and Schur Functions" being done under Herbert Foulkes. After two years in industry, a year at Aberystwyth and 3 years at UCC, he spent 1980-1988 at the BBC making films for the Open Univ. The rest of his career was spent at Univ London, Westminster Univ, and from 1995 on, at Luton Univ. |
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38. Alan Williamson was born 25 Jul in Bramhall, near Manchester. He was educated at Cambridge (MA 1971) and Cardiff (PhD 1974), his thesis on "Primitive Permutation Grpups " being done under Jim Wiegold. His career started at Warwick, Cardiff (1975-1979) and UCG (1979-1982),following which he settled down at Haywards Heath College. |
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39. Gareth Thomas from Wales was educated at Bristol (BSc 1972, MSc 1973, PhD 1975). He was at UCC 1981-2016. His interests include wave-current interactions and the modelling of wave-power devices. |
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40. Atomic physicist John Hughes was born 28 August in Belfast, and was educated at QUB (BSc 1975, PhD 1978), his thesis on "Non-adiabatic Transitions in Ion-Atom Collision" being done with Derrick Crothers. His career started at QUB (1980-1983) and IAEA Vienna (1983-1985), followed by a long spell at UU Jordanstown (1991-2004). He then served as both president of Maynooth and pro vice chancellor of NUI (2004-2010), and finally as vice chancellor of Bangor (2010-2018) . |
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41. Teunis (Tony) Dorlas was born 24 November in Groningen in Holland, and was educated entirely at the university there (BSc 1980, MSc 1981, PhD 1987), his thesis "On Some Aspects of Renormalization Group Theory and Hierarchical Models" being done under Nico Hugenholtz. After a postdoc at DIAS (1987-1989) under John Lewis & Joe Pulé, and a decade at Swansea, in 2000 he returned to DIAS, where he has supervised several PhDs. His book Statistical Mechanics: Fundamentals and Model Solutions (1999) is now in a new edition. He works on the theory of quantum computing and also on Pirogov-Sinai theory. |
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42. Howard Smith was born near Merthyr Tydfil, in south Wales, and was educated at Cardiff (BSc 1978?, PhD 1982) and Nottingham (MSc 1979?). His doctoral thesis was done under John Lennox above. His career was spent at Bucknell University. |
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43. Nuala O'Donnell was born in Dublin and was educated at UCD (BSc 1980, MSc 1981) and Cardiff (PhD 1988), her thesis on "Electromagnetic Radiation Reaction in General Relativity" being done under Bernard Schutz. She taught at Maynooth, DKIT, Southampton, DCU and IT Tallaght, before switching to industry. | |
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44. Anthony Small was born 15 Oct in London, to Irish parents, and was educated at Warwick (BSc 1980, PhD 1988), his thesis on "A Twistorial Interpretation of the Weierstrass Representation Formulae" being done under James Eells and John Rawnsley. Following stints at Aberystwyth (1986-1988), MPI (Bonn, 1989-1991), Dundee (1991-1993) and ICTP Trieste (1993-1995), he settled at Maynooth in 1995. His interests include minimal surfaces, CMC surfaces, monopoles, and projective structures on Riemann surfaces. |
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45. Graham Ellis was born 10 October in Chirk, south of Wrexham, Wales, and grew up in nearby Whitehurst. He was educated entirely at Bangor (BSc 1981, MSc 1983, PhD 1984), his thesis on "Crossed Modules and Their Higher Dimensional Analogues" having been done under Ronnie Brown. Most of his career has been spent at UCG/NUIG, where he has supervised 10 doctoral students. His current interests are in algorithmic aspects of algebraic topology and how it relates to low dimensional topology and group theory, and he recently published his second book An Invitation to Computational Homotopy. |
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46. Mark Jones was born in Neath near Swansea, and grew up in Cardiff, and was educated at Univ College London (BSc 1982) and Bath (PhD 1986), his thesis on "The Bifurcation and Secondary Bifurcation of Capillary-Gravity Waves in the Presence of Symmetry" being done with Derry's John Toland (who had taught him at UCL). His career started at QUB, and since 2000 he has been at Kingston Univ (London). |
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47. Astronomer Peter Coles was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, and was educated at Cambridge (BA 1985) and Sussex (PhD 1988), where his thesis on "Stochastic Fluctuations in the Early Universe" was done under John Barrow. His career has seen him do 8 year stints at QMC and Nottingham, then Cardiff (2007-2013). Sussex (2007-2017) and Cardiff again (2018). He is now at Maynooth. |
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48. Mathematical physicist John Gough was born 20 May in Drogheda, Louth, and was educated at UCD (BSc 1987, MSc 1988, PhD 1992), his thesis on "Large Deviations and Occupation Measures in Statistical Mechanics: Applications to the Spherical Model and Bose-Einstein Condensation" being done under Joe Pulé. After a few years at Maynooth, Rome and TCD, he settled at Aberysthwyth. He co-authored the book Quantum Fields and Processes A Combinatorial Approach (Cambridge, 2018). He also composes music. |
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49. Mikel Evans was born in St Asaph, north Wales (10 kms south of Rhyl). He was educated at Imperial (BSc 1989) and at Queen Mary (London) (MSc 1997, PhD 2000), his thesis on "The Determination of Orbits from Spacecraft Imaging" being done with Belfast's Carl Murray. His career has been spent at SWRI (2001-2003), Queen Mary (2003-2009), Cornell (2009-2018). He is now at the SETI Institute in California |
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50. Helen Joyce was born 23 July in Dublin, and grew up there and in Bray, Wicklow. She was educated at TCD (BA 1991), Cambridge (effectively MASt 1992), and at University College London (PhD 1995). Her thesis on "Packing Measures, Packing Dimensions, and the Existence of Sets of Positive Finite Measure" was done with David Preiss. After postdocs at Cardiff & Jyvaskyla, she worked at Cambridge, and also was the founding editor of the Royal Statistical Society's magazine Significance. Since 2005 she has written for the Economist, where she is now the finance editor. |
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51. Claus Köstler was born in Germany and was educated at Tübingen (Dip 1993) and Stuggart (PhD 2000), his thesis on "Quanten-Markoff-Prozesse und Quanten-Brownsche Bewegungen. Ein operatoralgebraischer Zugang" being done with Burkhard Kümmerer & Manfred Wolff. His career started at Queen's (Kingston), Carleton, Illinois Urbana-Champaign, St Lawrence (NY), and Aberystwyth (2009-2012). Since 2012 he has been at UCC. |
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52. Elaine Crooks was born in Scotland and was educated at Glasgow (BSc 1993) and Bath (PhD 1996), her thesis on "Travelling-Wave Solutions for Parabolic Systems" being done under Derry's John Toland. Since 2007 she has been at Swansea. |
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53. Rhian-Mari Thomas was born in Cardiff, Wales, and was educated at TCD (PhD 2000+), her thesis on "Structural, Electronic and Magnetic Properties of Ferromagnetic Perovskites: a Comparative Study" being done under Mike Coey. Her career has been in finance.
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54. Neuroscientist Kevin Murphy was educated at TCD (BA in Th Phy 2000, MSc in CS, 2001, PhD 2005), his thesis on "Methodological Issues in Event-related fMRI" being done under XY. He worked at NIH 2005-2008 and then moved to Cardiff, where he now heads up the brain imaging group. |
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55. Biostatistician Tricia Gunning was educated at DCU (BSc 2000, PhD 2006), and Dorset College (MEd 2002), her doctoral thesis on "Stratification of Skewed Populations" being done with Jane Horgan. After a few years at DCU and Limerick, she was at Cardiff (2009-2014) and is now at NUIG. |
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56. Justin Foley was educated at TCD (BA 2001, PhD 2005+), his thesis on "Novel Methods for Heavy-Quark Physicsfrom Lattice QCD" being done with Sinead Ryan. After postdocs at Swansea (2005-2007), Carnegie Mellon and the Univ of Utah, he went into industry. |
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57. David McConnell was born in Dublin and was educated at TCD (BA 2010, PhD 2014+), his thesis on "Co(X)-structure in C*-algebras, Multiplier Algebras and Tensor Products" being done with Richard Timoney. After stints at Glasgow (2014-2016 ) and Cardiff (2016-2018), he switched gears and now works as a statistician at the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics in Dublin. |
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58. Theoretical physicist Elizabeth Hynes was born in Wicklow town and educated at UCD (BSc 2012) and Swansea (PhD polymer physics 2018). She is a trainee patent attorney. |
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Today there are 8 universities in Wales, and the great bulk of the known Irish maths connections are with the ones in Bangor, Aberysthwyth, Swansea and Cardiff. BANGOR University started as the Univ College of North Wales (1884), and was a founding constituent institution of Univ of Wales (1893), becoming Univ College of Wales, Bangor. It finally became the independent Bangor Univ (2007). ABERYSTHWYTH University opened as Univ College Wales, Aberystwyth (1872), and was SWANSEA University started as Univ College of Swansea (1920), a constituent college of the Univ of Wales, and later became Univ of Wales Swansea (1996), then Swansea Univ (2007). CARDIFF University started life as Univ College of South Wales and Monmouthshire (1883), and was a founding college of the Univ of Wales (1893). It became Univ College Cardiff (1972), merging with the Univ of Wales Institute of Science and Tech to form the Univ of Wales College, Cardiff (1988). That was renamed Univ of Wales, Cardiff (1996), and finally Cardiff Univ (1999, independent from 2005 on). Long ago, there were Irish connections with institutions which were subsumed in increments into today's University of Wales TRINITY SAINT DAVID. That is the result of the 2010 merger of the Univ of Wales, Lampeter, and Trinity Univ College. Lampeter had opened as the theological David's College (1827), eventually becoming St David's Univ College (1971) and University of Wales, Lampeter (1996). Trinity Univ College started in Carmarthen as South Wales and Monmouthshire Training College (1848), then became Trinity College, Carmarthen (1931), and very briefly Trinity University College (2009). For the sake of completeness, though so far there are no known Irish maths connections, here are the other 3 Welsh third level institutions: WREXHAM Glyndŵr University originated as Wrexham School of Science and Art (1887), which in turn became Denbighshire Techl Inst (1927), Denbighshire Tech College (1939), then North East Wales Inst of Higher Ed (1975), and finally Wrexham Glyndŵr University (2008). CARDIFF METROPOLITAN University grew out of 4 colleges one of which was founded in 1865. They merged to form South Glamorgan Inst of Higher Ed (1976), Cardiff Inst of Higher Ed (1990), and then Univ of Wales Institute, Cardiff (1996), finally becoming Cardiff Metropolitan Univ (2011). UNIV of SOUTH WALES (2013, with Cardiff, Newport & Pontypridd campuses formed |
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