Non-uniqueness of Irish Mathematicians (Jul 2025)
What do Michael Brennan, Patrick Dowling, John Gough, Donal Hurley, John McDermott, Jim Murphy, Martin Newell, Kathleen O'Sullivan, Michael Ryan, Michael Tuite, and Michael Walsh have in common?
They are all well-known names in Irish maths circles. But unlike say, Rachel Quinlan or Dan Dundas, they are not unique: in each case there has been more than one such person with the same name.
Sometimes it's a father and son, and other times the people in question are unrelated. Below we survey numerous such cases, some going back a few centuries. We will keep adding to this blog, as time permits. So far, we've document 32 of over 80 known examples.
Breaking with our tradition of chronological listings, we present the relevant people in alphabetical order of last name. On occasion their names sound the same but are spelt differently.
As usual, we include some people with physics and engineering leanings. Please alert us to any omissions or errors.
Last updated 11 Oct 2025.
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00. Michael N. Brennan (1943-2024) was born 17 December in Kilkenny city and was educated at first at UCC (BA 1965, HDip 1966). He spend 1968-1975 in Manchester, working both as a programmer, a lecturer at Salford Tech, and a school teacher. He returned Ireland, teaching at Our Lady's Bower in Athlone (1978-1985), getting an MA (1982) from Maynooth along the way. He then lectured at RTC Waterford (later WIT, 1985-2009), where he was instrumental in setting up the maths support centre. He later did a PhD (2012) on Structure of Interlace in Insular Art under Nancy Edwards at Bangor in Wales, and was an art-science research fellow at TCD. He worked on the book Observations on Interlace in Art: its Structure and Varieties. TCD / ResearchGate / Arch Irl / Guardian |
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00. Michael Brennan (no middle name) was born in Kilkenny city, and grew up in Coon near Castlecomer. He was educated at first at Maynooth (BSc 1988, MSc 1989, Travelling Studentship Prize 1989). His 1995 PhD on "A Study of the Existence of Solutions to Some Initial Value Problems for Impulsive Differential Equations" was done at the Univ of Idaho under Larry Bobisud. His career has been spent at CIT/MTU. |
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00. Patrick A. Dowling (1858-1922) was born 26 October in Carlow. He was educated at UCD (BA 1892), and taught elementary maths there at least 1887-1901. He also taught at Maynooth and Carysfort, and later served as registrar of the Royal College of Science for Ireland, while for a while also being head of maths at the Dublin Technical Schools (and teaching at Kevin St). His first wife was John Casey's daughter Catherine (who died in 1905), and he edited or revised some 1890s editions of the geometer's books. Fund / 1901 Census / 1911 Census / 1902 / Obit |
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00. Patrick J. Dowling (1888-1972) was born 18 March in Kilmurry, Slieverue, Kilkenny. He was educated at first at UCD (BSc Chem 1909?, HDip 1913, MA 1914), his thesis being on "Use of Memory and Imagination in Mathematics and Science". He taught in Waterford and Kilkenny, and later earned a PhD in education from the University of London (1929), where he then lectured on the subject. 1901 Census / 1911 Census / Bio / Book |
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00. Paddy N. Dowling was born in Graignamanagh, Kilkenny, and was educated at first at UCD (BSc 1979, MSc 1980, Travelling Studentship Prize 1980). His 1986 PhD from Kent State on "The Analytic Radon-Nikodym Property in Banach Spaces" was done under Joe Diestel. His entire career has been at Miami State in Ohio, where he is currently dept chair. |
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00. Tom F. Dowling was born in Dublin, and was educated at DIT (BSc 1991) and Maynooth (MSc 1992, PhD 1996), his thesis on "Analysis and Computation of Analytic Capacities" being done under Tony O'Farrell. After a short spell at Ericsson he joined the CS staff back at Maynooth. |
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00. Tom Dowling (nephew of Paddy above) was born in Kilkenny, and was educated at Limerick (BSc 2004, PhD 2009). His thesis on "RADAR Images Using Multiply Scattered Waves" was done under Cliff Nolan. His career has seen him work for SPSS, Stryker and Philips. |
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00. John Gough (1721-1791) was born in Kendal, Westmoreland, England; nohing is known about his education. He taught in schools in Cork, then in Dublin (1752-1774) and in Lisburn (1774- ). His books include A Treatise of Arithmetic in Theory and Practice (1759) and Practical Arithmetick in Four Books (1767). |
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00. Mathematical physicist John E. 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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00. Michael Alphonsus Hayes (1935-2017) was born 2 August in Kilifane, Limerick, and was educated at first at UCG (BSc 1956, MSc 1957, Travelling Student Prize 1957). His 1962 PhD on "The Propagation of Elastic Waves In Deformed Isotropic Media" was done at Brown under Ron Rivlin. After some years at the University of East Anglia, he became head of mathematical physics at UCD, where he worked for a quarter of a century. His research was in elasticity theory and the kinematics of deformation. He co-authored the book Bivectors and Waves in Mechanics and Optics (Chapman & Hall, 1993). He supervised 4 PhD students, and NUIG recently established a prize in continuum mechanics in his memory. |
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00. Michael Anthony Hayes was born in Dublin and was educated at first at UCD (BE 1987) and DCU (MSc 1996). His 2001 PhD on "Models for Coating Flows" was done at Limerick under Stephen O'Brien. His career was spent at NUIG (Univ of Galway), where he works on fluid dynamics. |
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00. Donal J. Hurley was born 31 March in Clonakilty, Cork. He was educated at UCC (BSc 1965, MSc 1966, Travelling Studentship Prize 1966), and at Yale. His 1970 PhD on "Existence and Properties of Class A Geodesics on Riemannian Manifolds" was done under Gustav Hedlund (1904-1993). Most of his career was spent at UCC. He co-authored the books Geometry, Spinors and Applications (Springer 2000) and Topics in Differential Geometry; a New Approach Using D-differentiation (Springer 2002).
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00. Donal T. Hurley was born 17 July in Waterford city and grew up there and in Dublin. He was educated at UCD (BSc 1981, MSc 1982), doing research under Michael Hayes. His career was in secondary teaching, mostly in the UK. He taught for many years (2003-2020) in Clackmannanshire, east of Stirling. |
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00. John P. McDermott (born 22 March in Salthill, Galway) was educated at first at UCG (BSc 1962, MSc 1963, Travelling Studentship 1963). His 1968 DPhil "On the Representation Theory of the General Linear Group" was done at Oxford under Graham Higman. After 7 years on the staff at Newcastle, he returned to UCG where he taught for over 3 decades. |
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00. John J. McDermott (born 2 July in Galway city, son of John P. McDermott above), was educated at first at UCG/NUIG (BSc 1991, MSc 1992, Travelling Studentship Prize 1992). His 1999 PhD on "Subgroup Growth and the Plane Crystallographic Groups" was done at Bath under Geoff Smith. His career has seen him teach at UCC and work as scientific officer in computing St Andrews. He now lecures at Dundee. |
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00. Novelist and poet James Murphy (1839-1921) was born in Glynn, in the south of county Carlow. He is believed to have graduated from the Training College for Teachers in Marlborough St, Dublin, in 1860, whereupon he became principal of the Public Schools in Bray, Wicklow, later becoming Town Clerk there. In the 1880s, he was professor of maths at St Gall's secondary school, on Dublin's Stephen's Green, a Catholic University affiliate. In the 1890s, he worked as an inspector and/or examiner for the Intermediate Board of education He was well known for his novels, many of them with a 1798 or landlord clearance theme (e.g., The Forge of Clohogue). Wikipedia / Ricorso / Poets of Ireland / Family / 1901 Census / 1911 Census |
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00. Jim J. F. Murphy (1888-1939) was born 23 August in Sion Mills, Strabane, Tyrone, and grew up there and in Belfast. He was educated at University of London (BA, 1912) and later at QUB (MSc 1924), with a thesis on "Mathematical Study of Time and Temperature in the Earth". He taught at Belfast Mercantile College (1912 on), North Mon, Cork (1912-1921) and Belfast Municipal College of Technology (1921-1939). |
| 00. James Murphy graduated in maths from UCD in 1930. Nothing else is known. | |
| 00. John B. Murphy (possibly from Kerry) graduated in maths from St Patrick's, Maynooth, in 1934. Nothing else is known. | |
| 00. John Joseph Murphy graduated in maths from UCD in 1961. Nothing else is known. | |
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00. Martin J. Newell (aka Máirtín Ó Tnúthail, born 30 July in Galway city, 1910-1985), was educated at UCG (BSc 1929, MSc 1930, Travelling Studentship 1930, studied quantum mechanics at St John's, Cambridge, 1930-1933 under Ralph Fowler. After 2 years teaching at St Michael's in Listowel, he spent the rest of his career at UCG. He was appointed prof of maths in 1955, and later served as college president (1960-1975). He authored the book Algébar Iolscoile and co-authored the calculus book Nótaí ar mhion-áireamh with Michael Power above. |
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00. Martin L. Newell (born Galway city, son of Martin J. Newell above), was educated at first at UCG (BSc 1961, MSc 1962, Travelling Studentship Prize 1962). His 1966 PhD on "Poly-e-Gruppen" was done in Frankfurt under Reinhold Baer. He first taught at Queen Mary in London before returning to UCG for 35 years. He has edited 2 conference proceedings on group theory. His son John is also a mathematician. |
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00. Kathleen O'Sullivan (1967?-2024) was born in Skibbereen, Cork, and was educated at UCC (BSc 1988, MSc in stats 1990). Her whole career was spend lecturing there. |
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00. Kathy O'Sullivan was educated at first at UCC (BSc 2009). After working at EPISTEM at Limerick she did her PhD on "Numeracy teaching and learning at post-primary level in Ireland" under Niamh O'Meara, Merrilyn Goos & Paul Conway]. She is now at the Univ of Galway. |
| 00. Michael Ryan was born in Athlone, Westmeath and earned a maths & maths physics BSc from St Patrick's, Maynooth, inn 1957. Nothing else is known. | |
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00. Michael Ryan was born in Dublin and was educated at UCD (BSc 1965, MSc 1967). His career was spent at Waterford RTC and from 1980 on at NIHE Dublin (later DCU), serving as head of CS at the latter. He co-authored the book Using Fuzzy Logic: towards intelligent systems, Volume 1. |
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00. Patrick Ryan was |
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00. Patrick Ryan was |
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00. Henry Smith () |
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00. Henry Smith () |
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00. Joshua Tobin was |
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00. Joshua Tobin was |
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00. Michael J. Tuite (1946-2006) was born in Dublin and was educated at first at UCD (BA 1968, BSc 1970, MSc 1971?). His 1977 PhD on "The Effective Potential for Fermions in Quantum-electrodynamics" was done at the Univ of California, Irvine, under Myron Bander. After lecturing at Maynooth and Rathmines, he settled at Kevin St, with a research position at DIAS. No photo of him has come to light. |
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00. Michael P. Tuite (born 17 March in Dublin), was educated at first at UCD (BSc 1978, MSc 1979, Travelling Studentship Prize 1979), and then studied at Caltech. His 1984 PhD on "Topics in Quantum Chronodynamics" was done at Cambridge under David Scott. After a few years each at TCD and DIAS, he settled at UCG/NUIG. He has had 4 PhD students, and co-authored the book Moonshine: The First Quarter Century and Beyond (Cambridge, 2010). |
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00. John Walker () |
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00. John Walker () |
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00 Michael Joseph Walsh (possibly from Meath) got his 1975 PhD (mid career?) on "Management Information Networks" under Gordon Foster at TCD. His subsequent career was at Fintra Associates. |
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00. Michael Joseph Walsh was born 21 March in Dublin. He worked in the chemical industry before attending UCD (BSc 1967). After teaching secondry school for 3 decades, he joining the staff at Maynooth (1998-2012). He did an MA at UCD (2005) under Alex Montwill & Fiacre Ó Cairbre. In time, this led to The Great Calendar Reform: An Historical and Mathematical Examination (Logic Press 2018). |
| 00. Pat Walsh lectured maths at RTC Carlow from 1972 on. Nothing else is known. | |
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00. Pat F. Walsh (1948-2021) was born in Tallow, Waterford, and was educated at UCD (BSc 1969). He lectured for many decades at Kevin St. He carried out extensive testing of basic maths skills across a wide range of students. |
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00 Patrick Walsh lectures at Limerick IT. |
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00. Paul Wilson was |
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