Mathematical Writers--Poets, Novelists and More: May 2026
There are over 1000 Irish maths (and maths adjacent) books which have been published over the past 400 years. So there is no shortage of Irish maths writers with book to their name. Elegant and engaging though many of them are, they are not usually filed under Literature.
Many would view scientific and literary talents as being at opposite ends of the spectrum of human creativity, yet there have always been people who exhibited both. This month we survey some mathematically trained scholars in the Irish context who wrote poetry, novels, plays and the like.
Amateur poets Hamilton and Boole may be the best known examples, but we also celebrate George Darley, John Ingram, Brian Coffey, and Bernard McLaverty, who had mathematical beginnings which are easily overlooked, as well as more recent practitioners. Note that we have mathematician, economist and poet John Kells Ingram from Donegal to thank for first making the Book of Kells available for the public to view.
Dracula author Bram Stoker (1847-1912, TCD BA 1870) claimed to have graduated in mathematics, but this is not true.
There are literary offspring of maths people that we now mention briefly. CS Lewis's mother Flora Hamilton was an early Queen's Belfast maths graduate, poet Eamon Grennan's father Thomas did maths physics at Maynooth, and literary critic Edna Longley's father Stan Broderick was in the TCD maths dept for many years.
Thanks to David Malone, Peter Renz, David Webb and others for valuable input.
Please alert us to any omissions or errors.
Last updated 26 Jun 2026.
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01. Astronomer Thomas Robinson (1792-1882) was born 23 Apr in Dublin and went to school at Belfast Academy. He was educated in divinity at TCD (BA 1810, MA 1817, DSc 1863), where he lectured on physics (1814-1821) and authored the book A System of Mechanics (1820). He then spent 6 decades at the Armagh Observatory, where his many accomplishments including inventing the 4-cup anemometer. At the end of his life, he published a collection of verse from his youth. |
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02. Poet and dramatist George Darley (1795–1846) was born in December in Dublin, and was educated at TCD (BA 1820+). He then moved to London, and turned largely to poetry and literary criticism, also publishing the books A System of Popular Geometry (1826), A System of Popular Algebra (1826), and A System of Popular Trigonometry (1827). His reputation as a poet rose in the 20th century. Dion Boucicault was his nephew. Wikipedia / DIB / NLI / Ency Brit / Ricorso / Bio & Poems / Lange / Poetry Foundation |
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03. William R. Hamilton (1805-1865) was born 3/4 Aug in Dublin, and grew up there and (from the age of 3) in Trim, Meath. He was educated at TCD (BA 1827, MA 1837, LLD 1839). He was appointed the third Andrews Professor of Astronomy (and hence effectively Royal Astronomer of Ireland and Director of Dunsink) a few weeks before his BA graduation, and held those positions until his death. He is Ireland’s most renowned mathematician and mathematical physicist. His extensive legacy includes innovations in algebra, mechanics and optics. He is perhaps most well known for quaternions, a non-commutative algebraic system predating matrices. Cambridge awarded him LLD in 1845 and DCL in 1861. He was the first Foreign Associate of United States National Academy of Sciences. Hamilton also wrote poetry thoughout his life, and was a correspondent of Wordsworth. 1821 Census / Wikipedia / MacTutor / TCD / DIB / Papers / Enc Brit / Enc / Hamilton Walk / Poems / A Rhymer and an Analyst / The Poetry of Science |
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04. George Boole (1815-1864) was born 2 Nov in Lincoln, England. Despite being largely self taught, in 1849 he secured a job as the first professor of mathematics at Queen’s College, Cork. He died prematurely, and his extensive legacy includes Boolean algebra, which laid the foundations of the information age, and 4 books. His wife Mary and daughter Alicia also made contributions to mathematics. A keen poet all his life, his output here was recently collected and publiished by his biographer Des MacHale. Wikipedia / MacTutor / Enc Brit / 200th / Song / Poetry / Review |
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05. John Kells Ingram (1823-1907) was born 7 Ju in Templecarne, Pettigo, Donegal, and was brought up there and in Newry, Down. He was educated at TCD (BA 1842, MA 1850), where he excelled in maths, both as a student and early in his long career there. He has been co-credited with introducing the geometric concept of inversion in a circle. He was professor of oratory and Greek, and rose to the rank of vice provost. In 1847, he was one of the founders of the Dublin Statistical Society. He founded TCD's School of English Literature (1855). He is remembered today as an economist and as a poet; indeed as a student in 1843 he penned "The Memory of the Dead" (aka "Who Fears to Speak of '98", later popularised in song, set to the tune of The Third West Cork Brigade). Also, as the librarian at TCD in 1881, it was he who sucessfully proposed having the Book of Kells put on public display. |
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06. Novelist and poet James Murphy (1839-1921) was born in Glynn, in the south of county Carlow. He 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, 1885). Wikipedia / Ricorso / Poets of Ireland / Family / 1901 Census / 1911 Census |
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07. Poet William Wilkins (1852-1912) was born 21 Aug in Zákynthos, in the Ionian sea, Greece, and grew up in Louth. He was educated at TCD (scholar 1876, BA 1878) and was soon appointed headmaster at the High School in Dublin, where he taught W. B. Yeats. He authored Songs of Study (chiefly Verse of the Student Life in Dublin University, 1881) and The Present and Future Schoolmaster (1888). 1901 Census / 1911 Census / Bio / Poetry / Songs of Study |
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08. Constance Crommelin (later Masefield, 1867-1960) was born 6 Feb in Cushendun, Antrim, and was educated at Newnham College (BA earned 1888). She stayed an extra year to study literature. After a stint of interior decorating (a business venture with her sister Florence), in 1891 she was teaching at the Roedean School in Brighton. In the 1901 census she's a "teacher and lecturer" in London. She married future poet laureate John Masefield in 1903. She wrote plays with Isabel Fry. |
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09. Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) was born 12 Aug 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 Zürrich (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, and (in 1949) a collection of poetry called Gedichte (some translated from Irish). He spent his final years back in Vienna. Wikipedia / MacTutor / Ency Brit / Sofronieva / Gedichte / Archives |
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10. Pádraig de Brún (aka Paddy Browne, 1889-1960) was born 13 Oct in Grangemockler, Tipperary, near the county borders with Kilkenny and Waterford. He was educated first at UCD (BSc 1909, MSc 1910) as it transitioned from an RUI to an NUI constituent college. He earned the first NUI Travelling Scholarship in mathematical science and used it to go to the Sorbonne, where in 1913 he earned his doctorate on "Sur un probleÌme d'inversion poseì par Abel, et sur ses geìneìralisations" under Émile Picard. After a year at Göttingen, he spent 3 decades at St. Patrick's College, Maynooth (1914-1945), before becoming president of UCG. A priest and a classics and Irish scholar, as well as a mathematician, he wrote poems and stories, in English and Irish. His "Tháinig Long ó Valparaiso" opening line was well known to several generations of Irish schoolchildren. Wikipedia / DIB / Aimn / Catholic Archives / Family / NLI / 1901 Census
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11. Daniel McKeown (1895??-1967) was born in Belfast, and was educated at QUB (BA 1915). He taught at Waterpark College (Waterford, 1916-1917) and at St Columb's (Derry, 1917-1923) before returning to his old school, St Malachy's (Belfast, 1923-1960). He also wrote plays. 1901 Census / 1911 Census / 1948 / Obit |
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12. John L. Synge (1897–1995) was born on 23 Mar in Dublin, and grew up there and in Cavan. He was educated at TCD (Scholar 1916, BA 1919, MSc 1922, DSc 1926), and worked at the University of Toronto before becoming University Professor of Natural Philosophy at TCD (1925-1930). The rest of his career was spent back at Toronto, as well as in the USA, and finally at DIAS (1948-1972). He spoke at ICM 1924, 1932 and 1936, and played a key role in the foundation of the Fields Medal. He supervised many theses and wrote over a dozen books. He is credited with the introduction of a new geometrical approach to the special and general theories of relativity. His daughter Cathleen Morawetz (1923-2017) had a successful mathematical career at the Courant Institute in the USA. In 1957, he published Kandelman's Krim: A Realistic Fantasy, a short novel. Wikipedia / MacTutor / RDS / Royal Soc / / / Book Review |
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13. Novelist and short story writer Michael McLaverty (1904-1992) was born 5 July in Carrickmacross, Monaghan, was grew up there and in Belfast. He was educated at QUB (BSc 1927, MSc by research 1933). His thesis was on "Earlier Work on the Passage of Electricity through Gases". He earned a 1929 HDip in London. He taught maths and physics at St John's PED in Belfast (1929-1957) before formally ending this part his career as headmaster at St Thomas there (1957-1964). He had a long parallel career as a distinguished short story writer and novelist, and also influenced Heaney and McGahern. (Thanks to Eddie O'Kane.) Wikipedia / DIB / Hidden Gems / Ricorso / Bio / Irish News / |
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14. Poet Brian Coffey (1905-1995) was born 8 Jun in Dublin, and was educated at UCD (BSc 1929, MSc 1930), before studying physical chemistry under Jean-Baptiste Berrin in Paris for 3 years. He then switched to philosophy at the Institut Catholique de Paris under Jacques Maritain, and took the licentiate exam in 1936. His PhD was finally awarded in 1947. Most of his career was spent teaching maths in England, apart from a spell lecturing at St Louis Univ in Missouri (1947-1952). Wikipedia / DIB / Independent / NYT / Ricorso / Papers / Beake |
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15. Biometrician and novelist Ed Goodall was born in Belfast and was educated at QUB (BSc 1971, PhD 1983). His thesis on "Mathematical Models of the Lactation Curve of the Dairy Cow and Their Application in a Computer Model of a Dairy Enterprise" was done under X Y. After lecturing a little at QUB and at Univ of Ulster, his career was spent in the civil service. He has published 5 novels. |
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16. Physicist and poet Iggy McGovern was born in Coleraine, Londonderry, and was educated at QUB (BSc 1970, PhD 1977). His thesis on "Band Bending At Some Semiconductor Surfaces" was done under Chris Mee at QUB & Robin Williams at the Univ of Ulster in Coleraine. Most of his career was spent at TCD (1979-2013), where he supervised 8 PhDs. His research has been in surface physics, especially the photoelectron spectroscopy of semiconductor surfaces using synchrotron radiation. He has published 6 poetry collections, including A Mystic Dream of 4: A sonnet sequence based on the life of William Rowan Hamilton (2013) and The Eyes of Isaac Newton (2017). TCD / Hewitt Soc / Dedalus Press / YouTube |
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17. Tony O'Farrell was born 28 May in Dublin, grew up there and in Templemore, Tipperary. He was educated first at UCD (BSc 1967, MSc 1969), where he earned an NUI Travelling Scholarship. and then at Brown (PhD 1973). His doctorate on "Capacities in Uniform Approximation" was done under Brian Cole. He spent over 35 years at Maynooth, supervising 5 PhD students, and also helped to set up the department of computer science. His books (and publishing house, Logic Press) reflect his diverse mathematical interests. On 16 Oct 1990, he organised the first Hamilton Walk from Dunsink to Broom Bridge, in Dublin. Under the alias Fergal Anton, he has published Tipperary Tango (2019), a comic thriiler, and Limerucks (2023), a book of mischievous verse. Wikipedia / Maynooth / BIMS / Logic House / Hamilton Walk / Logic Press |
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18. Brendan McCann (1959-2025) was born 19 Nov in Tullamore, Offaly, and grew up in Galway city. He was educated at UCG (BA 1982, MA 1983) and at Würzburg (PhD 1985). His thesis on "On Fitting Classes of Groups of Nilpotent Length Three" was done under Hermann Heineken. Most of his career was spent at WIT (SETU). His research was in minimal Fitting classes of finite soluble groups and products of finite nilpotent groups. He left us with A Novella About a Theorem (2025). SETU / ResearchGate / Book |
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19. Fiacre Sheridan was born in Dublin and is a maths teacher. In 2009 he published the novel The Runners. |
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