Light Years Ahead

For the first 60 years, the Society’s interest in the sciences was somewhat limited to its practical research in agriculture and animal husbandry. Although botanic experiments and veterinary science lectures had been taking place since 1733, it wasn’t until the 1790s that the Society established professorships in chemistry and physics.

Galway-born Richard Kirwan provided a great impetus to the Society’s interest in chemistry and mineralogy. In 1792, he arranged for the purchase of the Nathaniel Gottfried Leske Collection of over 7,000 minerals on behalf of the Society. Kirwan’s burning glass (a lens for concentrating the sun's rays on an object in order to set fire to it) was purchased by the Society in 1812.

A year later, Charles Giesecke, a Danish dealer in geological specimens, was appointed by the Society to engage in mineralogical surveys and also to take on pupils. He travelled around Ireland in search of minerals and rocks, as well as specimens of insects and birds.

John Joly, a geologist, and the surgeon Walter Clegg Stevenson were amongst the first to recognise the value of radiotherapy in the treatment of cancer. At Joly’s suggestion, the Society established the Irish Radium Institute in 1914. Operating from the Society’s laboratories, the Institute became the primary supplier of radon to Irish hospitals.

Henry H. Dixon was the Society’s President from 1944-7. An outstanding plant physiologist, the Society published forty-one of his research papers in its Scientific Proceedings, including his breakthrough account on the phenomenon of the ascent of sap in trees. Dixon’s compound microscope was presented to the Society by his son in 1986.

Astronomy was another field of science pursued by the Society. George Johnstone Stoney conducted his experiments in solar physics and astronomy at the Society’s laboratories and was awarded the first Boyle Medal, an award inaugurated by the Society in 1899 to recognise scientific research of exceptional merit carried out in Ireland.

Today, the RDS continues to support progress in the sciences through its Science and Technology Programme.