Irish Swiss Mathematical Connections (Jan 2022)
In previous blogs here, we have surveyed Irish mathematical connections with European places of learning, including Cambridge, Oxford, and France (in each case only up to 1900, so far), as well as Austria. This month we turn to Switzerland. Further down the road, we will survey the much larger German canvas.
Some of the personalities below were actually Germans whose careers took them to universities in both Switzerland and Ireland. There are actually not many known Swiss natives in this blog.
Switzerland is a state in which three languages associated with neighbouring countries are used, with resultant variations in the names of its own cities and universities and scientific institutes. Below, we use the usual English versions; hence Zurich (instead of Zürich), Geneva (not Genève), and Lucerne (in place of Luzern).
(Map by Romano1246 via Wikipedia)
The goal below is to include all mathematical people whose training and/or careers included time in both Ireland and Switzerland. As well as Irish and Swiss people, we feature other scholars, e.g., those from elsewhere who did a PhD in one country and a postdoc in the other.
The story basically starts with the arrival of Schrödinger and Hopf in Dublin in 1939. An Austrian and a German, respectively, they had both worked in Zurich in earlier decades. Many such central European scholars were educated in an era where the historical record seems to imply that they were awarded doctorates after a few years of study and a dissertation. There is often no explicit mention of earlier degrees.
As usual, we include some people with physics and engineering leanings. Please alert us to any omissions or errors. (Some living people prefer not to be included.)
Last updated 23 Feb 2023.
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01. Ludwig Hopf (1884-1939) was born 23 October in Nürnberg, Germany. He was educated at Munich and Berlin, earning his 1909 doctorate on "Hydrodynamische Untersuchungen. Turbulenz bei einem Flusse. Über Schiffswellen." (Hydrodynamic Investigations. Turbulence in a Fluid. About Ship Waves.) back in Munich under Arnold Sommerfelt. He then worked at Zurich for about 2 years as assistant to Einstein, and was later based at Aachen (1921-1934). Forced out of his position by the Nazis, he left his homeland in 1938 and arrived in Dublin in July 1939, two months after Schrödinger did. He was appointed lecturer in applied maths at TCD, but died just before that Christmas. His expertise included differential equations, special relativity, hydrodynamics, and aerodynamics, and he authored 3 books. |
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16. Marjorie J. Long (1886-1937) was born 16 Jul in Arklow, Wicklow, and grew up there and in Mullingar, Dundalk, and Belfast. She was educated at Girton, earning 4th wrangler status, and receiving RUI degrees (BA 1908, MA 1909). In 1910, she submitted the paper "On Geiser's Method of Generating a Plane Quartic" to the Proceedings of the LMS. She taught at Bedford College for at least a decade. She translated the influential book Lezioni di calcolo differenziale assoluto (Alberto Stock Editore, 1925) by Tullio Levi-Civita, ed by Enrico Persico, as Absolute Differential Calculus (Blacktie & Son, 1927). She worked in the library of International Labour Office in Geneva, Switzerland, in the 1930s. 1901 Census / 1908 / Death |
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03. Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) was born 12 August in Vienna, and was educated at the Univ of Vienna (Dr Phil 1910). His thesis on "Über die Leitung der Elektrizität auf der Oberfläche von Isolatoren an feuchter Luft" (About the conduction of electricity on the surface of insulators in moist air) was done under Fritz Hasenöhrl. After another decade at Vienna, and a number of short appointments in Germany, he was at Zurich (1921-1927), Friedrich Wilhelm Univ in Berlin (1927-1934), Oxford (1934-1935), Graz (1936-1938) and Ghent (1938-1939). Eamon de Valera then famously invited him to Ireland where he was the first professor at the new Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (1940-1956). While in Ireland, he authored the books What Is Life? and Studies in the Non-Symmetric Generalization of the Theory of Gravitation. He spent his final years back in Vienna. |
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04. Physicist James Teegan (1899-1967) was born 29 November in Dublin, and was educated at UCD (BSc 1921, MSc 1929, PhD 1937). His early career included spells lecturing and teaching in Burma, England and Egypt. He was at the Anglo American Science Institute (Switzerland, 1953-1955), and briefly lectured in maths physics back at UCD (1962-1963). |
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05. Theoretical physicist Walter Heitler (1904-1981) was born 2 January in Karlsruhe, Germany, and was educated at Munich (Dr Phil 1926). His thesis "Zur Theorie konzentrierter Lösungen" (On the Theory of Concentrated Solutions) was done under Arnold Sommerfeld. After a year split between Copenhagen (with Bohr) and Zurich (with Schrödinger), he settled at Göttingen (1927-1933). The rise of the Nazis resulted in him moving to Bristol (1933-1940), following which he joined Schrödinger at DIAS (1941-1949). While in Dublin, he authored the book Elementary Wave Mechanics: Introductory Course of Lectures (1943). The last quarter century of his career saw him back in Zurich (1949-1974). He is sometimes credited with "bringing chemistry under quantum mechanics" via his theory of valence bonding. |
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06. Bill Hyland (1925-1996) was born in Cork city and grew up in Ballindangan, SW of Mitchelstown. He was educated at first at UCC (BSc 1948), and abandoned his MSc studies in June 1949 as one of the first cohort of CSO employees (1949-1952). He then worked for the UN, first in NYC (1952-1962) and then in Geneva (1964-1966). He served in the Irish government's Dept of Education (1962-1964 & 1966-1990). |
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07. Mathematical physicist Lochlainn O'Raifeartaigh (1933-2000) was born 11 March in Dublin, and was educated at first at UCD (BSc 1953, MSc 1956). His 1960 doctorate on "Non Local Field Theories" was done at the University of Zurich under Walter Heitler (see above). He had early stints at DIAS (1961-1963), Madras (1963-1964), Syracuse (1963-1967), and IAS Princeton (1967-1968), before settling at DIAS (1968-2000). He supervising many postgraduates and postdocs. His 5 books include Group Structure of Gauge Theories (1986). He is best known for several ground-breaking results in the application of group theory to the physics of elementary particles, notably his "no-go theorem." |
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08. Theoretical physicist Maurice Rice was born 26 January in Dundalk, Louth, and was educated at UCD (BSc 1959, MSc 1960) and Camdridge (PhD 1964). His thesis was done under Volker Heine. His career was spent at UC San Diego (1964-1966), Bell Labs (1966-1981) and EHT Zurich (1981-2004). His research has been in condensed matter physics, and he has supervised over 25 doctoral students. The late structural engineer Peter Rice was his brother. |
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08B. Theoretical physicist Michael Fry was born in Houston, Texas, and was educated at Georgetown (BSc 1962) and MIT (PhD 1968). His thesis on "Scalar QED" was done under Ken Johnson. After spells at Toronto (1968-1970), US Naval Ord Lab (1970-1973), Graz (1973-1974, Vienna (1974-1975), Tubingen (1975-1976), MPI (1976-1977), and Groningen (1978-1980), he settled at TCD. TCD / DIAS / InspireHap |
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09. Fintan Gallagher was born 17 February in Downings, Donegal, and was educated at UCG (BSc 1964, MSc 1966). Thanks to an exchange studentship program, he pursued postgraduate study in maths at the University of Geneva, but he soon switched to computers. Most of his career was spent in computer planning and design with IBM in Nice, France. His daughters Maureen (Clerc) and Isabelle (Mazelet) both ended up in maths-related research. Isabelle is professor in Paris-Diderot University, and Maureen is into brain research at INRIA in Sophia-Antipolis, near Nice.
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10. Emmanuel Buffet was born in France and was educated at École Polytecchnique Lausanne in Switzerland (PhD 1979). His dissertation on "Dynamics of Open Systems with Phase Transitions" was done under Philippe Martin. His whole career has been spent in Ireland, first at UCD (1981-1983) and NIHE Limerick (1985-1989). Since joining DCU (1989), his expertise expanded to include financial and actuarial mathematics. He supervised several PhD students. |
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11. Statistician Anne Sheehy was born in ? and was educated at UCC (BSc 1982) and at the Univ of Washington, in Seattle (PhD 1987). Her thesis on "Kullback-Leibler Estimation of Probability Measures with an Application to Clustering" was done with Jon Wellner. After 3 years at Stanford, she settled in Zurich. After some years lecturing at UHT & Univ Zurich, she moved into actuarial and pricing work.
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12. Theoretical physicist Beni Braun was born in Basel, Switzerland, and was educated at Basel (Dip 1986) and ETH Zurich (PhD 1991). He held positions at UC San Diego, Simon Fraser Univ and the Saul Scherrer Inst (NW of Zurick) before joining the staff at UCD (2004-2019). He is now back in Zurich. LindedIn / ReseachGate / IEEE |
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13. Lorenz Halbeisen was born in Switzerland and was educated at Basel & Zurich (MS 1990) and Zurich (DrScMath 1994). His doctoral thesis on "Ramsey Properties of Reals and Partitions" was done under Haim Judah. His career has been spent at ETH Zurich (1994-1997), CRM Bellaterra (1997-1998), UC Berkeley (1998-2000), QUB (2001-2005), and since 2009, back at ETH Zurich. His research includes combinatorics and set theory. He has authored 2 books. |
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14. Statistician Angelo Canty was born in Midleton, Cork, and was educated at UCC (BSc 1989) and at Toronto (MSc 1991, PhD 1995). His thesis on "A System To Test For Convergence Of The Gibbs Sampler" was done under Nancy Reid. His career started at Oxford (1996-1997), EPF Lausanne (1996-1998) and Concordia (1998-2001), before settling at McMaster. His interests include the applied uses of computationally intensive methods in statistics McMaster / ReseachGate / LinkedIn / ffff |
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15. Engineer Joseph Ó Ruanaidh (aka Rooney) was born in London and grew up in Dublin. He was educated at TCD (Scholar 1988, BA & BAI 1990) and Cambridge (PhD 1995). His thesis on "Numerical Bayesian Methods Applied to Signal Processing" was done under Bill Fitzgerald. After stints back at TCD (1994-1996) and at the Centre Universitaire Informatique in Geneva (1996-1998), he settled in the USA, working in industry since then. His expertise includes digital watermarking and optical sectioning. He co-authored the book Numerical Bayesian Methods Applied to Signal Processing (1996). |
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16. Ivo Sachs was born and was educated at Zurich (PhD 1995). His thesis on "On Symmetries, their Breaking, and Thermodynamics in Field Theory" was done under Andreas Wipf. His career started at DIAS, Durham, LMU, and TCD. Since then, he has been at Munich. His books include Lectures on Supersymmetry (DIAS, 2005) and Elements of Statistical Mechanics: With an Introduction to Quantum Field Theory and Numerical Simulation (2006), the latter co-authored with Siddhartha Sen & James Sexton. / ResearchGate / |
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17. Bruno Muratori was born in England and grew up there, in France and in Switzerland. He was educated entirely at Imperial College (BSc 1991, MSc 1992, PhD 1997). His thesis on "The Lanczos Tensor Potential: Its Wave Equation and Methods of Solution with a New Approach to Algebraically Special Spacetimes" was done under Dublin's Paddy Dolan. His career started at Maynooth (1998-2000) and CERN in Geneva (2001-2003). Since then, he has been at Daresbody Lab (STFC) in Cheshire. STFC / GoogleScholar / ResearchGate / LinkedIn
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18. Adrian Constantin was born 22 April in Temeswar, Romania. He was educated at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis (BSc 1991, MSc 1992) and at NYU (PhD, 1996). His thesis on "The Periodic Problem for the Camassa-Holm Equation" was done under Henry McKean. He taught at Zurich, at Newcastle upon Tyne, and at the Univ of Lund, before serving as Erasmus Smith's Prof of Maths (2004–2008) at TCD. Since then he has been at the Univ of Vienna. He also had a chair at King's College London (2011-2014). |
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19. Remo Hügli was born in Switzerland and was educated in Bern (PhD 2001). His thesis on "Contractive Projections on a JBW*-Triple and Its Predual" was done under Gottfried Rüttimann (who died before it was comleted), Martin Edwards & Henri Carnal. After maths postdocs at TCD and UCD, he worked in physics at UCD till 2015. He left academia and returned to his native land. |
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20. Aoife Hegarty was educated at UCG (BSc 1996, MSc 1997) and then did postgrad research at EPF Lausanne in CS. She also has an MBA (2008) from the International Institute for Management Development. Her career so far has been spent working as a strategic consultant, often based in Switzerland, sometimes for NGOs, especially in Africa. |
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21. Paul Hurley was born in Galway, and was educated at UCG (BSc 1995) and École Poly Féd Lausanne (PhD 2001). His thesis on "The Provision of a Low Delay Service within the Best-Effort Internet" was done under Jean-Yves Le Boudec. He worked at IBM Zurich (2013-2018) before joining the data science staff at West Sydney Univ in Australia. His interests include signal processing, medical imaging, radio astronomy, and abstract algebra. |
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22. Sejong Park was born in Korea, and was educated Seoul National Univ (BSc 1998, MSc 2002) and Aberdeen (PhD 2008). His thesis on "The Weighted Fusion Category Algebra" being done under Markus Linckelmann. His career included Aberdeen (2009-2011), Sogagng Univ (2011), École Poly Féd Lausanne (2011-2013), NUIG (2013-2016) and Southampton (2016-2017). Since 2018, he has worked in data science in Holland. |
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23. Vivien de Beaucé was born in ?? and was educated at TCD (BSc 1998, MSc in CS 1999, PhD 2004). His thesis on "Discrete Exterior Calculus with Applications to Flows and Spinors" was done under Jim Sexton. After a postdoc in Japan, he has been working as a quant in Switzerland. |
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24. Derek McHugh was born in Dublin and grew up there and in Longford town. He was educated at TCD (BA 1999, MSc in CS 2000) and at Maynooth (PhD 2005). His thesis on "Trapped-Ion Spin Molecules: Design and Control" was done under Jason Twamley. After 5 years at UCD, he went into data science, first at Zurich Ins (2012-2018) and now at Kitman Labs in Dublin. |
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25. Neil B. Dobbs was born 26 January in Waterford city and was educated at TCD (BA 2001) and Paris (PhD 2006+). His theseis on "Critical Points, Cusps and Induced Expansion in Dimension One" was done under Jacek Graczyk. His career so far has included positions in Warsaw, Stockholm, New York, Helsinki and Geneva. He is now at UCD, where his interests include measure-theoretical behaviour of chaotic dynamical systems and the geometric properties of Julia sets. |
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26. Ciara Bergin was born in Offaly, and was educated at first at Maynooth (BSc 2003, MSc 2005), her master's thesis on "Simply-connected Spin Brieskorn 5-Manifolds" being done with David Wraith). She then did her PhD on "Improving Measurements in Perimetry for Glaucoma" under David Crabb at City University London (2011). Her career so far has been spent as a data scientist at Jules-Gonin Eye Hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she works in statistical analysis and the modeling of clinical data in ophthalmology. |
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27. Theoretical physicist Nuala Timoney was born in Dublin, where her father and grandfather were both mathematicians. She was educated at TCD (BA 2004) and at Siegan (MSc 2007, Dr rer nat 2010). Her thesis on "Robust Rotations and Coherent Quantum State with a Single Trapped Ion" was done under Christof Wunderlich. Her career started at the Univ of Geneva 2010-2016, following which she has worked for Intel in Dublin. |
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28. Statistician Alberto Caimo was born in Italy, and was educated at first at Genoa (BSc 2006) and Bologna (MSc 2008). His 2012 PhD on "Probabilistic Inference for Social Network Graphs" was done at UCD under Nial Friel. His career started at Maynooth (2012-2013) and at USI Univ Svizzera Italiana (Lugano, 2014-2015). Since 2016, he has been on the staff at TUD. |
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29. Theoretical physicist Sinéad Griffin was educated at first at TCD (BA 2008), Imperial College (MSc 2008), and at UC Santa Barbara (MSc 2010). Her master's theses were done with Rivers and with Spaldin, respectively. She then did a PhD under Spaldin at ETH Zurich (2014), with a thesis on "". Since then, she has worked at Lawrence Berkeley Nat Lab & UC Berkeley. Berkeley Lab / IT / Web |
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30. Stephanie Hyland was born in Dublin and was educated in theoretical physics and applied maths at TCD (BA 2012) and Cambridge (MASt 2013). She then worked in computational biology, first in the USA and then at ETH Zurich (2016-2018), getting her 2018 PhD from Cornell along the way. Her thesis on "" was done under XY. She applies recurrent neural networks and Gaussian processes to modelling physiological signals and phenotyping. EHT / GoogleScholar / Web |
