Published 26 February 2010
“Icons of Irish Science” is a series of podcasts on RTÉ’s website about the lives and work of great Irish scientists.
In the 10-part series, which originally went out on RTÉ Radio 1, the Royal Irish Academy’s Pauric Dempsey explores the ideas of eminent Irish scientists whose work has had a global impact.
The programmes look at the following scientists:
- William Rowan Hamilton, who discovered quaternions
- Ernest Walton (1903-95), who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1951 for his part in splitting the atom
- Charles Parsons (1854-1931), inventor of the steam turbine
- George Boole (1815-64), who invented a revolutionary way of translating abstract ideas into algebraic equations
- Nicholas Joseph Callan (1799-1864), a pioneer in the development of electrical science and inventor of the induction coil used in every motor car
- George Stokes (1819-1903), who laid the foundation of the modern engineering science of fluid mechanics
- Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who detected the first pulsar
- Professor Patrick Cunningham, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, who developed the first test for CJD
- Dr Peter Butler, a pioneer in the field of plastic surgery
- Dr Garret Fitzgerald of the University of Pennsylvania, who exposed the dangers of the drug Vioxx
Listen to the podcasts on the RTÉ website
Learn more
Read our list of 10 great Irish engineers and inventors
