New York Irish Mathematical Connections: January 2024
In previous blogs here, we have surveyed Irish mathematical connections with Caltech (Sep 2017), Boston area universities (Jul 2018), and Illinois Irish maths (Jan 2019). Now we turn to New York, city and state: from NYU and Columbia to Cornell, as well as many CUNY and SUNY campusses. Over 60 people are included.
A primary focus is on Irish graduates who did their doctorates or later worked at NY universities. We also cover people whose careers (before or after their Irish training or work experiences) saw them spend time at NY third level institutions. Also, there was some traffic in the opposite direction: from non-Irish affiliated people from NY to Ireland. As usual, we include theoretical physicists and statisticians, as well as some with engineering leanings.
Please alert us to any omissions or errors. (Last updated 12 Jun 2026.)
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01. Robert Adrain (1775-1843) was born 30 September in Carrickfergus, Antrim, and is believed to have been self taught. Following the 1798 rebellion, he moved to the USA, where he was one of the leading lights of academic mathematics in the early 19th century, publishing the method of least squares before Gauss. He lectured at Princeton Academy (? -1800), York Country Academy (1800-1805), Reading Academy (1805-1809), Queen's College (Pennsylvania, 1809-1813), Columbia College (NY, 1813-1826), Rutgers College (1826-1827) and finally at the Univ of Pennsylvania (1828-1834), where he also served as vice-provost. |
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02. James McMahon (1856-1922) was born in Armagh, and first pursued metaphysics and classical studies at TCD (BA 1881, MA 1890). He then taught mathematics at Cornell for 35 years, serving as chair too, and published extensively in applied maths. He was a founding member of what became the American Mathematical Society, and is believed to be the first Irish person to supervise a doctoral thesis (in 1888). He wrote three books, on calculus, geometry and hyperbolic functions, respectively. TCD awarded him a DSc in 1919. |
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03. James J. O'Dea (1857-1916) was born in Jan in Kilmaine, near Ballinrobe, Mayo, and earned an MA somewhere. He taught at St Jarlath's (Tuam), then set up his own academy in Ballina cirica 1880. In the 1890s he taught at St Francis College (Brooklyn), then returned to Ireland. His books include The New Explicit Algebra in Theory and Practice (1895) and An Elementary Treatise on Logarthims, Exponential and Logarithmic Series, Undetermined Co-efficients, and the Theory of Determinants (1903). |
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04. Éamon de Valera (1882-1975) was born 14 Oct in New York City, and grew up in Bruree, Limerick. In 1904, he earned a maths BA in Dublin from the Royal University of Ireland. After teaching at Rockwell and Clonliffe, and attending classes at TCD, he was on the staff at Carysfort (1906-1916) and Maynooth (1912-1914). He then turned to nationalist activities, and ultimately entered a long career in politics. In 1940, as Taoiseach, he initiated the foundation of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. |
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05. Mathematical physicist and crystallographer Paul Ewald (1888-1985) was born 23 Jan in Berlin, Germany, and was educated at Cambridge, Göttingen and München (PhD 1912). His thesis on "Dispersion und Doppelbrechung von Elektronengittern" was done under Arnold Sommerfeld. His career was spent at München (1912-1921), Stuttgart (1921-1933), Cambridge (1937-1939), QUB (1939-1949) and the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (1949-1959). He is best known for his work on X-ray propagation. |
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06. Paddy Heelan (1926-2015) was born 17 Mar in Dublin, and was educated at UCD (BA 1947, MA 1948) and at St Louis Univ (PhD 1952). His thesis on "Theory of Elastic Head Wave Propagation Along a Plane Interface Separating Two Solid Media" was done with James Macelwane. He first taught at Clongowes, then lectured physics at UCD (1957-1965). Following ordination, the rest of his career he was in philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook (1970-1992) and Georgetown Univ (1992-2013). His books included Quantum Mechanics and Objectivity: a Study of the Physical Philosophy of Werner Heisenberg (1965) and Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science (1983). Wikipedia / aa / aaa |
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07. Cathleen Morawetz (née Synge, 1923-2017) was born 5 May in Toronto, and split her early years between there and Dublin when her father Jack Synge was on the staff at TCD. She was educated at the University of Toronto (BA 1945), MIT (MSc 1946) and NYU (PhD 1951). Her thesis on "Contracting Spherical Shocks Treated by a Perturbation Method" was done under Kurt Friedrichs. Her career was spent at the Courant Institute, researching nonlinear PDEs and their applications such as wave propogation. She served as President of the American Mathematical Society (1995-1996). In 1996, she received an honorary ScD from TCD.
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08. Jeremiah O'Keeffe (1927?-1959) was born in Tullamore, Offaly, and grew up there and in Galway city. He was educated at UCG (BA 1948, MA 1949) and the University of London (PhD 1953). His thesis on "Applications of Fourier Transforms to Potential Theory" was done with George Temple. After a few years at UCG, he went to the Courant Institute in 1958, but sadly died within a year. |
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09. Patrick Donohoe (Pádraig Seosamh Ó Donnchadha, 1930-1985) was born in Rochester, NY, and grew up in Rathmore?/ Gneeveguilla, Kerry. He was educated at first at UCC (BA 1950, MA 1951), where he was on the staff for much of the 1950s. He was at DIAS for a year, and after earning an NUI Travelling Studentship in 1954, he studied fluid dynamics briefly with M J Lighthill in Manchester. In 1960, he joined the staff at QUB, where he earned his 1967 PhD on "Aspects of the Boussinesq Approximation and of its Application to Thermal Convection in a Gravitational Field with Cylindrical and Other Geometries" under Norbert Dunwoody and Adrian Roberts. |
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10. Mathematical physicist Ciaran Ryan (1934-1973) was born in Athlone, Westmeath, and was brought up mostly in Longford. He was educated at Maynooth (BSc 1955, MSc 1957) and the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, earning his 1962 PhD there on "A Doublet Scheme for the Leptons and On a Generalised Commutation Relation" under Lochlainn O'Raifeartaigh. A priest too, he taught at the University of Rochester in NY and then at UCD, and co-authored the book Theory of Weak Interactions in Particle Physics (Wiley, 1969). He died young in a mountaineering accident near Geneva, soon after supervising the PhD of Sean Brown (1945?-1981). |
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11. Diarmuid Ó Mathúna was born on 22 Mar in Cork city, and was educated at UCC (BSc 1955, MSc 1957), where he was awarded an NUI Travelling Studentship in 1958, and MIT, where his 1962 PhD on "Rotationally Symmetric Deformations in Helicoidal Shells" was done with Max Reissner. He has worked at the Courant Institute (1962-1964), Harvard (1964-1966), NASA, the US Department of Transportation and the DIAS. His books include Mechanics, Boundary Layers and Function Spaces and Integrable Systems in Celestial Mechanics.
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12. Theoretical physicist Takaaki Yukawa (1934-1971) was born 29 Sep in Kobe, Japan, and grew up there and in the USA. He was educated at Columbia (BSc 1957) and Kyoto Universities and at DIAS, obtaining his 1965 PhD from TCD on "Spherically symmetric motion of energy in general relativity" with John L. Synge. His short career included time at Univ Manchester (1966-1970?), followed by a brief spell in publishing in Japan. |
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13. Theoretical physicist Allan Solomon (1936-2013) was born 11 December in Glasgow, and grew up Belfast. He was educated at TCD (BA 1958), Cambridge and the Sorbonne (PhD, 1963). His thesis on "On the Masses of the Elementary Particles" was done under Maurice Levy & Louis Michel. His career started in industry (1963-1966), followed by stints at NYU Polytech Brooklyn (1966-1968), Tel Aviv Univ (1968-1969), and DIAS (1969-1971). He was then at The Open University for 3 decades (1971-2002), after which he returned to the Sorbonne. He supervised at least 4 doctoral students and edited 3 books, including a Festschrift for Joseph L. Birman. |
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14. Ross Geoghegan was born in Dublin and was educated at UCD (BSc 1963, MSc 19640 and Cornell (PhD 1970). His thesis on "Topological and Simplicial Properties of Function-Spaces, and a Stability Theorem for Spaces of Homeomorphisms and Embeddings" was done with David Henderson. Most of his career was spent at SUNY Binghamton, where he supervised 14 PhD students. His books include Topological Methods in Group Theory (2008) and The Art of Proof: Basic Training For Deeper Mathematics (2010). Binghamton / llll |
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15. Richard Aron was born 23 Oct in /??/ and was educated at Union College Schenectady (BS 1965) and the University of Rochester (PhD 1971). His thesis on "Some Properties of Holomorphic Functions in Infinite Dimensions" was done under Leopoldo Nachbin. His career started at Kentucky, followed by a decade mostly at TCD, where he supervised the PhD of Ray Ryan. Since 1983, he has been based at Kent State Univ. His research is in infinite dimensional function theory. |
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16. Phil Boland was born in /??/ and was educated at Le Moyne College (Syracuse) (BSc 1966) and the University of Rochester (PhD 1969). His thesis on "Some Spaces of Entire and Nuclearly Entire Functions on a Banach Space" was done under Leopoldo Nachbin. His entire career was spent at UCD (1971-2007), where he supervised 2 PhDs. His interests switched from analysis to probability and statistics, and he was the first head of UCD's Dept of Statistics. In time, he set up actuarial. UCD / ResearchGate |
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17. Oliver McBryan was born in Dublin and was educated at UCD (BSc 1966, MSc 1967) and at Harvard. His 1973 PhD on "The Vector Currents in the Yukawa_2 Field Theory" was done under Arthur Jaffe. His career, which saw him move to computer science, was spent at NYU (1980-1989) and the University of Colorado (1987-). He developed the World Wide Web Worm, an early web search engine. |
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18. Biostatistician Jim Hanley was born 5 Jun in Castletownbere, Cork, and grew up on Bere Island. He was educated at UCC (1968 BSc, 1969 MSc) and Waterloo (PhD 1973). His thesis on "Quantitative Studies in Cigarette Smoking Behaviour" was done with William Forbes & Jack Robinson. His career started at SUNY Buffalo (1973-1977) and Harvard (1977-1980), before he settled at McGill (1980-2023). His research interests have been in statistical methods in the evaluation of the performance of diagnostic tests. He supervised 17 PhD students. |
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19. John J Murray was educated at UCC (BSc 1969?, MSc 1970) and Notre Dame (PhD 1974). His thesis on "A Second Main Theorem of Value Distribution Theory on Stein Manifolds with Pseudoconvex Exhaustion" was done under Wilhelm Stoll. His career was at Texas Tech and (from 1985) at SUNY Stony Brook. |
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20. Mathematics education expert John O'Donoghue was born 24 Feb in Nenagh, Tipperary. He was educated at St John Fisher College in Rochester (BA 1969) and at Rensselaer Polytechic (MA physics 1971), both in New York, and later at Loughborough (PhD 1978) in the English midlands. His thesis on "Educating and Training Mathematics Teachers for Secondary Schools in Ireland: a New Perspective on Teacher Education" was done under Avi Bajpai. Most of his career was spent at Thomond College and then at UL, where he supervised over 30 theses at master's and PhD level. His books include Real-World Problems for Secondary School Mathematics Students: Case Studies (2011). He was founding co-director of the National Centre for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching and Learning (NCE-MSTL, now now EPI-STEM). His expertise include secondary level maths teacher education, adult maths education/numeracy, service maths teaching, and math support. |
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21. David Cox was born in Dublin and was educated at UCD (BSc 1972, MSc 1973) and Rochester (PhD 1979). His thesis on "Sharp Inequalities for Martingales" was done under Johannes Kemperman. His career has been in environmental health statistics, survey design, data management, and risk assessment. ResearchGate / eee |
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22. Joe Varilly was born 20 Feb in Carrigans, Donegal, east of Letterkenny, and grew up in Dungloe. He was educated at UCD (BSc 1972, MSc 1973), where he earned an NUI Travelling Studentship, and at the University of Rochester (PhD 1980 on "Dilations of Dynamical Evolutions" under Gérard Emch). He has spent his career at the University of Costa Rica, and has written two books on noncommutative geometry. His son Tony Várilly-Alvarado is also a mathematician. |
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23. Theoretical physicist Danny Heffernan was born 5 Jan in Dublin and was educated at TCD (BA 1974, MA 1979) and Cornell (PhD 1981). His thesis on "Theoretical Investigation in to Possible X-Ray and Gamma Ray Lasers" was done with Richard Liboff. Apart from spells at DIAS (1074-1975, 1981-1982 and Kevin St (1982-1985) his career was spent at DCU (1985-1993) and Maynooth (1993- ). He has supervised 11 PhDs. Maynooth / |
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24. Colm Ó Dúnlaing was born in Dublin and educated at TCD (BA 1974) and Santa Barbara (PhD 1981). His thesis on "Finite and Infinite Regular Thue Systems" was done under Ronald Book. After a few years at the Courant Inst in NYC, his career was spent back at TCD (1986-2023). His interests include the design and programming of algorithms, especially those related to geometry. TCD / |
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25. Luke Mannion was born in Clonbern, Galway, and was educated at UCG (BSc 1974, MSc 1975) and at Brown (PhD 1981). His thesis on "Dynamic Fracture Of Idealized Fiber-Reinforced Materials" was done under Allan Pipkin. His career was spent at St John's Univ in Queens (1981-2015). |
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26. Statistician Gabrielle Kelly was born in Drimoleague, Cork, and grew up there and Beaumont, Cork city. She was educated at UCC (BSc 1975, MSc 1976) and Stanford (PhD 1981). Her thesis on "The Influence Function in the Errors in Variables Problem" was done with Rupert Miller. Her career started at UCC (1981-1985), Columbia Univ, and Univ Col London (1987-1990), before settling at UCD (1990-). She has supervised 4 PhDs. Her interests ????? www / eee |
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27. Oisin McGuinness was born in Dublin and was educated at UCD (BSc 1976, MSc 1977), and at Brown (PhD 1981+). His thesis on "" was done with Lubin. His career started at Univ Virginia (1981-1985) and Fordham Univ (1985-1990). He then worked mosttly in UNIX system administratiion (1990-2022). LinkedIn / |
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28. Astronomer Carl Murray was born 26 Sep in Belfast, and was educated at Queen Mary College, in Lonon (BSc 1977, PhD 1980). His thesis on "Aspects of the Dynamical Evolution of Small Particles in the Solar System" was done under Iwan Williams. After a postdoc at Cornell (1980-1982), he returned to Queen Mary (1982-2020), where he supervised 11 PhDs. His books include Solar System Dynamics (2000) and Planetary Ring Systems: Properties, Structure, and Evolution (2018). His expertise encompasses the rings of Saturn and their gravitational interaction with the small natural satellites orbiting nearby. |
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29. Jim Sexton was born in Dublin and educated at TCD (BA 1978) and Columbia (PhD 1984). His thesis on "" was done under Norman Christ. After spells at Fermilab (1984-1986), IAS Princeton (1986-1988), and IBM (1988-1991), he returned to TCD (1991-2004), where he supervised at least 8 PhDs. Since 2004, he has been back at IBM. BOOK? LinkedIn / |
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30. Colm Mulcahy was born 10 Sep in Dublin and was educated at UCD (BSc 1978, MSc 1979) and Cornell (PhD 1985). His thesis on "Spaces of Signaures" was done under Alex Rosenberg. Most of his career was spent at Spelman College, in Atlanta, GA. He authored the book Mathematical Card Magic (AK Peters, 2013). Wikipedia / Web |
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31. Nessan Fitzmaurice was born in Kilmactranny, Sligo, north of Boyle, Roscommon, and was educated at first at UCD (BSc 1979, MSc 1980). His 1986 PhD on "Numerical Calculations of the Stability of Some Axisymmetric Flows Proposed as a Model for Vortex Breakdown" was done at Cornell with Philip Holmes. After a few years at NASA, his career was spent in finance. |
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32. Chris King (1959-2023) was born 11 Jan in Dublin and was educated at TCD (BA 1980) and Harvard (PhD 1984). His thesis on "The U(1) Higgs Model" was done under Belfast's Arthur Jaffe & Tadeusz Balaban. He was at Princeton (1984-1987) and Cornell (1987-1991) before settling at Northeastern, where he supervised 4 PhDs. His research spanned theoretical physics, probability, quantum information theory, and the fractal dynamics of consciousness. GoogleScholar / Obit1 / Obit2 |
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33. Kevin Hutchinson was born 2c Apr in Dublin and was educated at UCD (BA 1981, MA 1982) and at Cornell (PhD 1987). His thesis on "On the Homology of GL_2 of a Field" was done with Steve Lichtenbaum. His career started at Univ of Pennsylvania (1987-1989) and Haverford College (1989-1991), before returning to UCD (1991-2023), where he supervised 3 PhD students. His interests are in homology of linear groups, K-theory, and number theory.
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34. Tom Brady was born in Kilbride, Meath, and was educated at TCD (BA 1982) and Cornell (PhD 1988). His thesis on "The Integral Cohomology of Out_+(F_3)" was done under Marshall Cohen and Karen Vogtmann. After spells at Univ Michigan and Brigham Young, he settled at DCU, where he has supervised 2 PhD students. His interests are in geometric group theory and combinatorics. |
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35. Paul (Niall) Feehan was born in Dublin and was educated at first in electrical engineering at UCD (BE 1982) and the Univ of Missouri, Rolla, Miss (ME 1984). He then did a masters in maths at the University of Southern California (1988). His 1992 PhD on "Geometry of the Moduli Space of Self-Dual Connections on the Four-Sphere" was done at Columbia under Duong Phong. He was at Harvard (1993-1997) and Ohio State (1997-2000) before being appointed Erasmus Smith Prof of Maths at TCD in 2000. Since 2001 he has been at Rutgers, were he has supervised 8 PhD students and authored 8 books. His interests include PDEs, differential geometry, mathematical physics, and the applications of partial-integral differential equations to derivative security pricing and risk management. |
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36. Seamus Davis was born in Cork, and was educated at UCC (BSc 1983) and Berkeley (PhD 1989) |
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37. Statistician David Madigan was born 11 Dec in Athlone, Westmeath, and was educated at TCD (BA 1984, PhD 1990). His thesis on "An Investigation of Weights of Evidence in the Context of Probablilistic Expert Systems" was done under Kris Mosurski. His career started at the University of Washington (Seattle, 1990-1999) and Rutgers (2001-2007. After a long spell at Columbia (2007-2020), he became Provost at Northeastern. He has supervised 18 PhD students. |
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38. Robert Reams was born in Dublin and was educated at TCD (BA 1984, HDip 1987) and UCD (MSc 1989, PhD 1994). His thesis on "Topics in Matrix Theory" was done under Tom Laffey. After stints at Univ Texas SW Med Center, Univ Kentucky, William & Mary, Univ Wyoming, UCG, William & Mary again, and Virginia Commonwealth Univ, he settled at SUNY Plattsburgh (2008). His research is in matrix theory. |
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39. Sergey Frolov was born in Russia, a was educated at Moscow State Univ (1987) and Steklov Inst Math (PhD 1990). His thesis was done with Slavnov. After a further decade at Steklov, he was at Ohio State (2000-2003) and SUNY Utica (2003-2005), before settling at TCD in 2006. TCD / aaa / bbb |
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40. Theoretical physicist Éanna Flanagan was born in Castlebar, Mayo, and was educated at UCD (1987 & 1988) before completing his Caltech PhD in 1993 under Kip Thorne on "Topics In General Relativity: the Hoop Conjecture, and Theoretical Aspects of Gravitational Wave Detection". Most of his career has been spent at Cornell. |
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41. Noel Brady (brother of Tom above) was born in Kilbride, Meath, and was educated at TCD (Scholar, BA 1988) and Berkeley (PhD 1993). His thesis on "The Geometry of Asynchronous Automatic Structures on Groups" was done under John Stallings. After postdocs at Utah and Cornell, he settled at the Univ Oklahoma, where he recently served as dept head. He has supervised 4 PhD students, and co-authored the book The Geometry of the Word Problem for Finitely Generated Groups (2007). His interests are in |
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42. Mike Evans, was |
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43. Data scientist and astronomer Aaron Golden was born 23 January in London and grew up in Bray, Wicklow, and in Dublin. He was educated at TCD (BA physics 1991), QUB (MSc computational science 1993) and NUIG (PhD 1999), his thesis on "High Speed Optical Photometry of the Crab, Geminga and PSR B0656+14 Pulsars" being done under Michael Redfern & Andrew Shearer. He then joined the staff at NUIG where he expanded his interests to include bioinformatics and genomics. He spent 2011-2016 at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Yeshiva University in NYC, and as been back at Galway since then. He has supervised over 10 PhDs. He has supervised over 10 PhDs. |
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44. Michael Meagher was born in Jun in Tipperary and was educated at first at TCD (BA 1991, MSc 1992), with a thesis on "Fear and Loathing in Ergodic Theory and Topological Dynamic" done under Donal O'Donovan. After a decade teaching, he did his 2005 PhD on "" under ?? at Ohio State. He is now at Brooklyn College, where his interests include ???. |
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45. Cormac O'Sullivan was born 26 Nov in London and grew up in Macroom and Bandon, Cork. He was educated at TCD (BA 1993) and Columbia (PhD 1998). His thesis on "Properties of Eisenstein Series Formed with Modular Symbols" was done under Dorian Goldfeld. Most of his career has been spent at Bronx Community College, and the Graduate Center of CUNY. His interests include modular forms, L-functions and integer partitions. Bronx / GC / GoogleScholar / ResearchGate |
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46. Shayan Sen was born in Dublin and educated at TCD (BA 1992) and Cornell (PhD 1999). His thesis on "Representations And Characters Of An Extension Of SL(3,R) By An Outer Automorphism" was done with Birgid Speh. His career has been spent as an actuary in Canada. |
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47. Luis O'Shea was born in Dublin and educated at UCD (BSc 1992) and Cornell (PhD 1999). His thesis on "Abelian Sesquisymplectic Convexity for Orbifolds" was done with Reyer Sjamaar. His career has been spent as in capital investment in NYC. |
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48. 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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49. Brendan Owens was born in Kitwe, Zambi, and grew up mostly in Skerries, Dublin. He was educated at TCD (BA 1993) and and Columbia (PhD 2000). His thesis on "Instantons on Cylindrical Manifolds and Stable Bundles" was done under John Morgan. His entire career has been at Glasgow, where he has supervised 5 PhDs. His main interests are in low-dimensional topology. |
| 50. Andrei Parnachev | |
| 51. Richard Casey | |
| 52. Gavin Hurley | |
| 53. Eoin | |
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54. 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 IMPAN Warsaw (2007-2008), Stockholm (2008-2010), IBM New York (2010-2012), Helsinki (2012-2014) and Geneva. Since 2017, he has been at UCD, where his interests include measure-theoretical behaviour of chaotic dynamical systems and the geometric properties of Julia sets. |
| 55. Diarmuid Cahalane | |
| 56.Michelle Carey | |
| 57. John T Sheridan | |
| 58. Owen Ward | |
| 59. Eamon O'Shea was born in Dublin | |
