Who are the five Irish STEM pioneers added to RIA dictionary?

From a leading obstetric surgeon to Ireland’s first professor of psychiatry, here are five Irish people who excelled in their STEM careers.

This month (April), the Dictionary of Irish Biography (DIB) is publishing 22 new and updated biographical entries of important Irish figures, past and present.

Among the new entrants are Cork’s own tea maestro Peter Barry, who grew Barry’s Tea from a local shop in the city to Ireland’s second-largest tea company; journalist Catherine ‘Kit’ Ferguson, who was the first accredited woman war correspondent; and poet Eliza Hamilton Dunlop, whose work drew attention to colonial crimes against indigenous Australians.

Described by Seamus Heaney on its publication in 2009 as “an epoch-making event in the history of Irish scholarship”, the DIB online edition now features nearly 11,000 entries and is growing all the time.

The DIB “tells the island’s life story”, according to the Royal Irish Academy, “through the biographies of men and women born in Ireland, north and south, who came to prominence either at home or overseas, and the noteworthy Irish careers of those born outside Ireland”.

Here, we take a closer look at the STEM pioneers to have made it into the dictionary this year.

Mary Gough (1892-1983)

Mary Gough is the first Irish woman known to have earned a PhD in mathematics, which she completed in 1931.

Gough was born in Wexford in 1892. At just 17, she headed to the US to take holy orders in Texas.

She studied at Incarnate Word College in San Antonio and became a teacher, before completing bachelor’s and master’s degrees in maths at the Catholic Sisters College, which was part of the Catholic University of America. She later undertook a PhD in algebraic geometry at the university, with minor studies in education and physics.

According to the DIB, Gough undertook her degrees to improve the quality and range of teaching provided at catholic women’s institutions. She taught at Incarnate Word College until 1943, when ill health required her to move to a desk job. She was a treasurer and chief accountant at St Joseph’s Hospital in Fort Worth for 20 years.

She never returned to Ireland, though she always kept in touch with her family.

In 2023, the Irish Mathematics Teachers’ Association launched a competition for secondary-school students in Gough’s name, and South East Technological University set up a PhD in STEM, partly funded by her descendants, to mark her achievements.

Peter Beckett (1922-1974)

Peter Gordon Stewart Beckett was born in 1922 in Dublin.

The first cousin of famous playwright Samuel Beckett, Peter Beckett followed in his father’s footsteps and studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin.

He moved to the US to further his medical career and specialised in psychiatry in 1949, developing novel teaching methods for medical students and trainee psychiatrists.

In 1969, he returned to Ireland to become Trinity’s first professor of psychiatry, where he further developed his influential clinical teaching techniques. He was soon made a fellow of the Royal Academy of Medicine and became dean of Trinity’s medical school in 1972.

He was known not just for his inspiring teaching but also for his diplomacy and was instrumental in ensuring that the newly formed St James’s Hospital included inpatient psychiatric beds alongside his teaching unit, even though some clinicians protested the move.

He died suddenly at home in 1974. Since that year, the Peter Beckett prize has been awarded annually to a medical student in Trinity who shows the greatest potential in psychiatry.

John Byrne (1933-2016)

John Gabriel Byrne was born in Dublin in 1933. He studied engineering at Trinity College Dublin. While studying concrete technology at Imperial College London in 1956, he first heard about digital computers.

He returned to Trinity to undertake a PhD in mathematical modelling for stresses in concrete beams and encountered the work of Bernard Carré, a mathematician who had developed a programme for solving the type of equations Byrne was working on.

Along with his PhD supervisor Prof William Wright, Byrne arranged for the purchase in 1962 of Trinity’s first computer, an IBM 1620. He became the head of a new computer science department in 1969 and the first chair of computer science in 1973. He would go on to lead the department for 30 years. By the time he stepped down in 2001, the department had grown to house about 60 academic staff.

Described as the ‘father of computing’ in Ireland, Byrne is credited with pioneering the growth of computer science in the country and was successful in winning numerous national and international grants for computer science research. He saw software and ICT as major growth opportunities for Irish industry and worked with IDA Ireland to help shape Ireland’s now major international role in the sector.

Maura Lynch (1938-2017)

Maura Lynch was born in Cork in 1938. After completing her leaving certificate, she joined the Medical Missionaries of Mary (MMM).

With the support of MMM, Lynch studied medicine in University College Dublin. She then became a surgeon and physician at Our Lady of Lourdes International Missionary Training Hospital in Drogheda, before completing a diploma in obstetrics and gynaecology at the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in London.

In 1967, Lynch travelled to Angola to work at the Chiulo Mission Hospital, where she worked for the next 20 years, returning home for short periods to work in Irish facilities.

In 1984, she undertook surgical training in St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin and qualified as a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1985.

Around this time, she trained in obstetric fistula repair surgery in Nigeria, under Dr Ann Ward.

Obstetric fistula (or vesicovaginal fistula, VVF) is a debilitating condition caused by the development of an abnormal opening between a woman’s genital tract and her urinary tract or rectum. It is directly linked to a major cause of maternal mortality: obstructed labour. According to the World Health Organization, the condition can be largely avoided by timely access to obstetric care, delaying the age of first pregnancy and the cessation of harmful traditional practices. Poorer women and girls who lack access to skilled maternity and obstetric care are most affected by this condition.

In 1987, Lynch was assigned to Kitovu Mission Hospital in Uganda, as a consultant surgeon, obstetrician and gynaecologist, and here she was struck by the suffering of women and girls who had developed obstetric fistula. She dedicated the remainder of her career to performing repair surgeries, training local medical staff and educating the public about the condition.

It is estimated that she performed more than 1,000 repair surgeries, often in difficult conditions with regular power outages and a shortage of basic medical supplies.

Even in her later years, when her eyesight was failing, Lynch continued to work to educate people about the condition.

In 2005, she opened a centre of excellence to treat obstetric fistula at Kitvou.

Named by the UN Population Fund as one of the greatest fistula surgeons in the world, Lynch received international recognition for her work and was seen as a champion for vulnerable women and girls who suffered the pain and shame of this condition.

Elinor Wiltshire (1918-2017)

With an impressive family ancestry including a high king, a saint and several artists and activists, Wiltshire was exposed to creativity and activism from her earliest years growing up on Foynes Island in Limerick. She was educated at home with her brothers and later at Newtown boarding school.

She travelled widely before settling in Dublin and publishing articles in the Irish Press, and then founded a printing company with Thomas O’Brien.

She later established herself as a photographer and set up a photographic studio with Reginald (Reggie) Wiltshire, who had studied natural sciences at Trinity College Dublin and who she would go on to marry. She is remembered for documenting Dublin life in poignant detail and many of her photographs are now housed in the National Library of Ireland.

She moved to London in 1971 and became increasingly interested in botany and joined the London Natural History Society and took part in botanical surveys and volunteered in the botany department of London’s Natural History Museum. She was prolific in this second career, publishing more than 20 papers on botany topics including biodiversity, mosses and the flora of London parks.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Huband bridge in Dublin, photographed by Elinor Wiltshire in 1966. Image: National Library of Ireland on The Commons @ Flickr Commons