Ingenious Wexford – exploring the county’s science and technology heritage

 This meeting of Wexford Science Café starts from the chapter on Wexford in Mary Mulvihill’s pioneering work, Ingenious Ireland – a county-by-county exploration of Irish mysteries and marvels (2002, republished 2019).

This chapter gives short accounts of some people and places in the county of particular scientific or technological interest. Wexford Science Café aims to gather more detail on these, and to add further people and places that might be included in an updated and expanded account of Wexford’s contribution to Ireland’s heritage of invention and discovery.

At the 15 March meeting we will hear short profiles of some people who have a role in ‘Ingenious Wexford’. We invite those attending to bring their own suggestions, information and questions about others who might be included.

Our initial cast of characters includes:

• Bartholomew Lloyd (1772-1837), from New Ross, mathematician, who became president of the Royal Irish Academy and Provost of Trinity College Dublin in the last years of his life
• Arthur Leared (1822-79), from Wexford, doctor at Oulart Fever Hospital and later in London, Crimean War, Iceland, Morocco and elsewhere, who invented the double stethoscope
• Arthur Conway (1875-1950), from Main Street, Wexford, mathematician and physicist, Fellow of the Royal Society, who became President of University College Dublin in the 1940s
• Phyllis Ryan (1895-1983), from Taghmon, chemist, who established her own public analysis laboratory in the 1920s, staffed fully by women
• Tom Walsh (1914-88), from Piercestown, agricultural scientist, who became the first director of the Agricultural Institute (later Teagasc) in the 1950s

In a further exploration of Wexford’s scientific and technological heritage, we may collect and discuss places of interest: for example, Johnstown Castle, Pierce’s Foundry, The Cull drainage works.

If you have any comments, additions or suggestions on this event, please send them to wexfordsciencecafe@gmail.com

Booking is essential.