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Ireland reveals rich scientific history

When you think of Ireland’s cultural heritage, what comes to your mind? Perhaps William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Irish music, The Book of Kells. What about its science heritage?

Robert Boyle, Ernest Walton, William Rowan Hamilton, Ellen Hutchins, Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Cynthia Evelyn Longfield are some of the many scientists that shaped Irish history and marked the path that leads to the future. As once said by the 1911 Literature Nobel Prize winner, Maurice Maeterlinck: "At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past."

According to the book by David Attis and R Charles Mollan, Science and Irish Culture - Why the History of Science Matters in Ireland, “From the settlement of Ireland in the 17th century by English and Scottish adventurers intent on promoting the latest scientific and technological advances, to the flourishing of scientific institutions in Ireland at the height of its Georgian splendour, to a temporary decline of scientific activity at the time of Irish independence, and a spectacular increase of State interest in science and economic development in the 1990s, science has played a critical role in the development of Ireland.”...

Read entire article at Silicon Republic