West_Cork_scienceJFA

Science tales of West Cork

Tales of West Cork science & technology and of West Cork born scientists

Underlying proposition: The world needs more science, not less since hardly anyone
wants to go backwards, and the present human influenced climate situation is unstable.
The goal here is twofold: One is to promote curiosity/ interest for the few who will
become scientists, and for the many who want to appreciate how we have arrived at
where we are and to positively influence future change. The second goal is provide a
local perspective.
A regional area: In celebrating the features of just one area, West Cork, the aim
here is not to have a “small view” of the bigger picture, but to balance it with “not just
elsewhere, but our region has contributed also” – and not with over-grandiose statements
equivalent to the famous, though comical, editorial in the Skibbereen Eagle newspaper in
1898 when it declared it was “keeping its eye on the Czar of Russia” (though he might
have been better off had he paid attention!). Unlike other parts of Cork county, it cannot
claim connections to such luminaries as John O’Keeffe, who won the 2014 Nobel prize in
Physiology or Medicine, or to George Boole, whose work in what is now UCC is central
to computer-based information and texts etc (how he came to die at 49 from a cold and
his wife’s role is a story in itself, even though a salutary one). In the absence of major
experimental research centres in West Cork, much of the science actually performed
there is mostly observational, though there is not a sharp distinction. However, there is a
broader and richer tale to tell.

1. EXPLORERS: The world around us and deductions from its observation, Exploring
the cosmos
 Drombeg near Glandore
 Skibbereen lady astronomer’s name on a moon crater,
 Recovery of a “cold war” damaged radio astronomer.
 The Kinsale Antarctic explorers: Mount McCarthy in the Antarctic and the
McCarthy island in South Georgia.

2. A UNIVERSE OF ATOMS: Physical sciences and manipulating materials.

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in
our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” ―
C. Sagan.

Skibbereen/Tragumna’s J.C. Séamus Davis: Fundamental properties of matter and
Superconductivity

Crookhaven/Brow head, the first trans Atlantic telegraph message.
Adrigole and the banning of ozone destroying CFCs.
Explosions at Ballincollig’s gunpowder mills, an oil tanker in Bantry and a grain silo
ignition in Dunmanway.
Bandon/Overton and the first suspension waterwheel.
Ballinscarthy/ Clonakilty farmer/carpenter’s son who pioneered car assembly lines
Computer software and big data storage –Einstein or at least a derivative of his
famous formula in West of Ballincollig (EMC2).

3. LIFE DELIGHTS IN LIFE: Life Sciences / Relevance of the mindset associated with
finding new species and studying lifecycles, to knowledge of evolution. Onwards to
medical relevance and molecular understanding.

“The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are
put together.” C. Sagan,

Overcoming difficulties to discover new plants near Ballylickey ’s and great
illustration.
Study of Lough Hyne
Sherkin island marine station
Leap and the discovery of the medically important species, Leishmania donovanii).

 Stability and variation in the billions of years flow of RNA and DNA hereditary
INFORMATION :Dynamic enrichment of gene expression into protein, and its
manipulation (Inchigeela and Dunmanway).
Utilization of the knowledge for human benefit via pharma/biotech in Brinny near
Bandon, Dundurrow near Kinsale, Ringaskiddy and Balineen). Dunmanway leather.

4. THE LAND & SEA/ ENVIRONMENT (Beneficial use with the need to preserve for
the future)
Geological maps
Copper and barium sulphate. Allihies, Schull, Glandore etc

Preservation of Lough Hyne
Preserving feed for whales, other marine life and seabirds,
Destruction of the Geragh near Macroom for how much electricity?
Influence of human action on the natural world and how deleterious impacts can be
ameliorated.

5. TOWARDS THE FUTURE WITH AN EYE ON THE PAST: Writing Science Tales
of Tomorrow / Human relationships and the origin of the term “social sciences”
Glandore. Origin of the term “Social Science” and a short-term controversial
“experiment”.
Rosscarbery and financial rewards of science performed elsewhere.
Castle (re)building.
Funding and support for science over the decades
A counterpart to serious science
Primary and Post primary schools: Science poems, essays, festivals and the West
Cork Education Centre.

1. The world around us and what we can deduce from it: Exploring the cosmos:
1A Drombeg near Glandore, While hunter/gatherers fitted into the landscape,

the advent of farming and landscape alteration seems to have coincided with the
erection of stone monuments with the earliest known one being 11, 000 years ago in
S.E. Turkey. In Ireland farming is thought to have started around 6,500 to 6,000 years
ago with the Céide Fields in County Mayo being from 5, 500 to 5000 years ago, with
Newgrange at 5,200 years ago preceeding the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge in
England. Giant standing stones, monuments and stone buildings were developed in
cereal farming based Orkney islands about 5000 years ago (these were discovered in
2003, see 2014. Science vol. 343, 18-23).

About 3, 300 years ago, Drombeg near Glandore was built in the Bronze age, and
shows evidence of sophisticated astronomical knowledge, surveying skills and of
proficiency with geometry (Bonane on the Kerry side of the Glengariff/Kenmare “the
tunnel road” is also remarkable). Whether the constructors of this site were
descendants of people who come to Ireland several thousands of years earlier
following the retreat of the massive ice sheets, were recent arrivals from elsewhere,

and how much of the skills were developed locally, is unknown. As Ronan Murray, a

surveyor from Oregon, who settled in Ireland in 1996, points out in the Introduction

to the second edition of his book “Secrets of Drombeg”, such issues are secondary to

appreciation of the skills involved. In his book he claims that Drombeg is part of a

24km regional triad of stone circles forming an equilateral triangle, and writes

interestingly about the water pit. Contrast with The megalithic stone alignment at

Curranes, northwest of Castletownsend, known as the Three fingers. See page 7 of

“Secrets of the Irish Landscape”.

1B. Skibbereen lady astronomer’s name on a moon crater

Agnes Clerke and a crater on the moon near where Apollo 17 landed:
………………………………………………………………………………………………
Southern Star. Saturday, October 18, 2014.

The glittering story of the stargazing sisters from Skibbereen

By Robert Hume
THIRTY years ago this month, USA launched Challenger, the first spacecraft to carry
two women crew. Victorian astronomers, Agnes Clerke and her sister, Ellen – daughters
of a Skibbereen bank manager, and both with published books or pamphlets on
astronomy bearing their name- would have been intrigued: they may even have booked
their places on board.

Although she grew up in the shadows of the Famine, close to two soup kitchens,
the younger sister, Agnes, born 1842, ended her life so famous that a crater on the moon
has been named after her.

Their mother, who had been educated at the Ursuline College in Blackrock in the
city, attached great value to the education of girls. …..

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

Part of an article from: Irish Examiner, Friday 12.09.2014 (12th Sept. 2014)

……. the Skibbereen astronomer …

There are many people with a crater on the moon named after them. But Agnes
Mary Clerke (1842-1907) from Skibbereen, daughter of a bank manager and amateur
astronomer, is one. Located on the eastern edge of the Sea of Tranquility, the crater
bearing her name lies close to where Apollo 17 landed.

Clerke’s mother, who had been educated at the Ursuline College in Blackrock,
Cork, attached great value to the education of girls. The family owned a four-inch
telescope, and she encouraged Ellen to use it.

She observed Saturn’s rings and Jupiter’s moons, and by the age of 11 had read
Herschel’s Outlines of Astronomy, and by 15 was already writing about astronomy.

He brother Aubrey, who was studying mathematics, physics and astronomy at
Trinity, tutored her to University level.

At 25 she travelled with her sister Ellen to Florence to study science and
linguistics. In 1877 the sisters went to London where Agnes published articles for the
Edinburgh Review about the rise of the mafia, and the influence of Copernicus in Italy.
She also wrote 159 biographies for the Dictionary of National Biography, and entries on
mathematicians and astronomers with a surname between G and L (among them Galieo,
Herschel and Kepler) for Encyclopaedia Britannica.

With the publication in 1885 of A Popular History of Astronomy during the
Nineteenth Century, Clerke became internationally famous as the first scientist to capture
public interest in the subject.

But she was criticized by the male establishment of astronomers for collating and
summarizing the works of others, and doing “too little practical work”. In reality, her
three month stint at the Cape of Good Hope Royal Observatory had gained her sufficient
experience to be able to write with authority.

Soon afterwards she was offered an appointment at the Greenwich Royal
Observatory, but she was deterred from accepting it because of the number of women
who had been attached at night in Greenwich Park.

In 1903 Agnes Clerke was made an honorary member of The Royal Astronomical
Society, a rank previously held only by two other women; but even then, because she was
a woman, she was not allowed to use the library.

1C. Beara peninsula recovery in of a “cold war” damaged Director of a steerable

radio telescope: The holiday cottage of Sir Bernard Lovell was km away in …… He

operated the then largest steerable radio telescope at Jodrell Bank. This telescope was

also used as part of an early warning system for Soviet nuclear attacks. Lovell reports that

the Soviets tried to erase his memory with a lethal dose of radiation during a visit to the

Deep-Space Communication Center, Eupatoria, Crimea, in 1963 during the cold war, but

he had taken notes. He became very ill but recovered in his Irish holiday house and went

on to live to age 98.

The Kinsale Antarctic explorers: Mount McCarthy in the Antarctic and the

McCarthy island in South Georgia.

Tim and Mortimer (Mort/Murt) McCarthy (childhood overlooking the Bandon river
estuary, Kinsale). Antarctic explorers. Murt was a heroic helmsman on the ‘Terra
Nova’ trip in 1910 from which Scott lost the race to the South pole to the Norwegian
Amundsen. Mount McCarthy in the Barker Range is named after him. Timothy (Tadhgh)
McCarthy was seaman on the Endurance for Shackleton’s 1914/1915 expedition
(Second Officer, Tom Crean, Dingle peninsula) to cross the Antarctic from coast to coast
– via the South Pole -a distance of some 1,800 miles. Timothy surmounted horrendous
problems in such a way that the McCarthy Islands of South Georgia were named after
him. Though the McCarthy brothers were not scientists, they showed enormous skill and

endurance in exploring the natural world – an overlapping goal with that of many
scientists (explorers of a different type).

2. Physical sciences and manipulating materials.
Skibbereen/Tragumna’s S. Davis and Superconductivity.

J.C. Séamus Davis, born in Skibbereen (renowned footballer family), attended
St. Fachtna’s school there, graduated in physics from UCC in 1983, and later a Ph.D.
from the University of California, Berkeley. He stayed on to become a full Professor
there and in 2003, he left Berkeley for Cornell University in upstate, New York. In 2010
became one of the youngest physicists ever to be elected a member of the US National
Academy of Sciences.

One of Seamus’ major discoveries at Berkeley in the late 1990’s was the
‘Superfluid Josephson Effect’. Richard Feynman and Brian Josephson had predicted
in the 1960’s, that the macroscopic quantum dynamics of a superfluid could be
revealed as a pure musical tone that should be generated spontaneously by
pressurizing the quantum fluid. Seamus developed the complex instrumentation
necessary and eventually discovered this quantum sound - the first time that a
quantum mechanical phenomenon was experienced by one of the human senses.

Séamus then became fascinated by the challenge of visualizing quantum
mechanics. In the early 2000’s, he invented the ‘spectroscopic imaging scanning
tunneling microscope’ an instrument that allows the quantum ‘matter waves’ of
electrons to be visualized (and even converted into movies), revealing many amazing
and exotic quantum effects. Today he is leading the world in applying his science to
discover compounds that will exhibit superconductivity at room temperature,
allowing the passage of electricity without loss of energy – a holy grail of science for
economic and social benefit.

Seamus has authored over 30 papers in Science and Nature, the two foremost
scientific journals in the world. In 2005 he was awarded the Fritz London Memorial
Prize, the greatest honour in Low Temperature Physics. Of the 48 awardees since
1957, 20 have been Nobel Laureates.

Seamus and his wife, Kathy Selby (physicist and fiddle player of Irish
tunes), and their two sons visit West Cork in the summers where his extended
family live.
(Part of the above was taken from the address of UCC President Michael Murphy
as Seamus was being awarded an honorary D.Sc. For the full address click …..
(see end below)

C) Crookhaven/Brow head and the first trans Atlantic telegraph message.
3. 3.8 km?? east of the Mizen head. In Crookhaven there are the remains of the

Marconi Wireless Telegraph Station, operational from 1904 until 1914. Marconi
was keen to get a signal across the Atlantic and in 1902 a telegraphic station was
established in Crookhaven. This wasn't successful and in 1904 permission was
given to put up telegraphic aerials and equipment on the Fastnet Rock. This was
shortly moved to Brow Head where the first trans-Atlantic telegraphic message
was transmitted. The station was manned continuously day and night, three shifts,
two operators. In 1915 the Luisitania liner passed the Brow Head Signal station,
shortly before it was torpedoed with some parallel cconsequences to the attack on
Pearl Harbour in the second World War. .
D) Adrigole and the banning of ozone destroying CFCs.

Work at his holiday cottage in Adrigole by English scientist, James Lovelock, was
significant for generating the international treaty to ban ozone destroying CFCs
(chlorofluofocarbons).

In the late 1960s, Lovelock developed a monitoring instrument, ECD (electron
capture device), for sensitively detecting atmospheric pollutants. In 1969 he
brought the instrument to his cottage in Adrigole and was the first to discover
CFCs in the atmosphere. Later, on board the research vessel RRS Shackleton, he
monitored the concentrations of CFCs in the atmosphere from the Northern
hemisphere to the Antarctic. However, it was not Lovelock who realized that the
CFCs he had detected posed a threat to the ozone layer, but Rowland and Molina
in 1974 (for which they shared the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1995).

A) Explosions at (I) Ballincollig’s gunpowder mills, (II) an oil tanker in
Bantry and (III) a grain silo ignition in Dunmanway.

The second largest industrial archaeology site in Europe is in West Cork. The Gunpowder
mills in Ballincollig occupied 435 acres and at its peak employed 500 people supplying
gunpowder for military and mining purposes. It eventually closed in 1903. The use of
hydro-power on the massive site was extensive and though many precautions were taken
there were still 16 serious explosions killing 45 people. Even so this was still less than the
explosion of the French oil tanker ship, Betelgeuse, killing the entire French crew of 43
and 7 local Gulf Oil company workers on the Whiddy island terminal in Bantry Bay
around 1AM on the morning of 8th January 1979. The explosion, which was heard as far
away as Dunmanway, occurred just after a fire started after 80, 000 tons of crude oil, two
thirds of the total, had been unloaded. Installation of the safety “inert gas” procedure to
prevent explosions of the combustible gas which accumulates as oil is discharged, was
not standard when the tanker was built in 1968. West Cork’s fire brigades came on hand
but were not equipped to deal with such a situation where the intensity of the fire was
such that molten metal was dripping into the blazing oil covered sea. Fortunately the fire
brigade crews did not themselves become casualties.

(Methane and the Grain silo fire in Dunmanway?

Ballinscarthy/ Clonakilty farmer/carpenter’s son who pioneered car assembly lines
The son of a Ballinscarthy/ Clonakilty farmer/carpenter who pioneered car assembly
lines. Henry’s model T Ford brought widespread car ownership (and reduction of what
was considered horse manure “pollution”!). Henry, together with his own son Edsel,
returned in 1912 to the empty tenant cottage/ tiny hut and 30 acres of land in nearby
Lisselane, where his father had lived before emigrating to Michigan in the famine year of

1847 (where his gradfather had made a purchase in 1832). In 1917, a Ford office opened
in Cork ahead of an assembly factory that lasted for 60+ years.

Irish Examiner, Tuesday, July 30, 2013. 88751 “Henry Ford and his links to
Ballinascarthy, West Cork”

TO this day the legend persists that if only the parish priests hadn’t got involved,
Ballinscarthy in West Cork would have its own Ford factory.

The village, just a few kilometres north of Clonakilty, is the birthplace of William Ford,
father to Henry Ford, the carmaker extraordinaire who transformed American life. Born
150 years ago today in the month when the largest city in his home state of Michigan —
Detroit, the Motor City — has declared bankruptcy, it might be appropriate to review his
family’s connection with Ballinascarthy, and in particular, the time one of America’s
richest men decided he couldn’t afford the asking price for a piece of his own family’s
past.
Anyone driving into West Cork on the N71 will notice the shiny silver Model T Ford in
the centre of Ballinascarthy, unveiled in 2000, and the nearby Henry Ford Tavern. The
links between the village and the Fords of America have become even more pronounced
in the past 20 years, especially since Benson Ford and his sister Lynn Alandit visited in
1992. Ten years earlier, Henry Ford II, Henry’s grandson, paid a call and before that
came the visit all of Ballinascarthy had been waiting for — the return in 1912 of the
prodigal son, Henry Ford.
One of his direct descendants is Hazel Ford Buttimer, who still lives in Crohane outside
Ballinascarthy. Henry Ford was born in Dearborn, Michigan, but his father William left
Ballinascarthy as a 21-year-old farmer and carpenter in 1847. It was the second phase of
a Ford family migration to the US, but as Betty Hennessey, secretary of the
Ballinascarthy Festival Committee, explains, Henry wasn’t ever quite done with the land
of his father.

“Henry was back in 1912 and he tried to buy the place,” Betty says, referring to the
empty tenant cottage and 30 acres of land in nearby Lisselane where William had lived.
“It was only a tiny hut.”
When Henry returned in 1912, alongside his son Edsel, he was a man of means. Betty’s
husband, Patrick, also a Henry Ford buff, claims the man who popularised motor travel
made an effort to buy the farm but there were three single brothers who wouldn’t sell.
“The parish priests advised them to hold on because there was more in him,” Patrick
says. It seems you can put a price on sentiment, and in this case, it was one Henry Ford
wasn’t willing to pay. As Hazel puts it with a smile: “He wasn’t going to be run up the
street on that one.” By all accounts Henry took away the hearthstone from the old house
and wasn’t seen in the vicinity for years afterwards.
The people of Ballinascarthy intend to mark the 150th anniversary of Henry’s birth, but
Hazel has already been party to some of the celebrations planned in Michigan. She was in
the Ford stronghold of Dearborn at the end of May, when the last house in which he lived
was being renovated to mark his 150th birthday. “We have been over three times
altogether,” Hazel says. It’s a far cry from the decades up to 1992, before which Hazel
was unfamiliar with her American cousins. “I could not honestly say we were related,”
she says. “My father would not have known much at all.”
By contrast, Hazel is now a veritable library of Ford family facts, so much so that her
own son, Clifford, says to her: “Mother, would you ever write that down?” Fords have
been at Crohane for over 300 years, or as she puts it with a laugh, until she got married
and changed the name. She has instant recall of various aspects of the story, which began
when Samuel and George Ford went to Michigan to secure their own land holding, as
opposed to the lease on land the family had back in West Cork, in 1832. Fifteen years
later Samuel and George’s brother John (Henry’s grandfather) and Henry’s father, 21-
year-old William, emigrated to America along with the rest of the family, including the
brothers’ mother, then in her early 70s.
“William was farming and he took his carpentry tools with them when they went over,”
Hazel says. “He worked on his father’s farm over there. There was a family of Aherns
from Cork City — they were next door to them and farmers as well and William got
attracted to Mary (Litogot — a Dutch girl who had been fostered by the Aherns). Mary
died quite young and William got the farm from the Aherns, next door to his own.”
Henry was born into farm life and by 1896 had built his first car. He founded the Ford
Motor Co in 1903 and the first Ford cars seen in Ireland were at the 1907 Irish Motor
Show at the RDS.
As legend has it — and it is the version told by Hazel — Henry Ford got the idea for
assembly line car manufacturing when he saw wool moving from sheep to material in a
textile factory. The idea was the launchpad for the Ford Motor Co, which transformed
America and turned Henry into one of the great industrialists of the age. The ready
availability of car travel changed America; even today, any visitor to the US will note
how everyone seems to drive and few people seem to walk anywhere.
From the company’s Michigan base Ford stamped his imprint on the American economy,
but while the hearthstone was the only item salvaged from his Ballinascarthy trip — and
placed in his own Fair Lane house in Dearborn — he did think of Cork when it came to
expanding the Ford business overseas. By 1917 a Ford office had opened in Cork ahead

of the opening of the factory which was to play such a key role on Leeside for decades
afterwards.
In the meantime, Hazel has entertained visiting Fords three times at her house since 1992
and has visited Michigan over the years. On the relationship between the Fords of
America and Ballinascarthy, Betty says: “It has got stronger really,. They hadn’t the
interest earlier in the century but they have of late because of Hazel really.”
By the 2000 unveiling of the Model T the Ford company covered some of the shortfall
for the stonework around it, while on Aug 3 two years ago, William Clay Ford, Henry’s
great grandson, paid a visit alongside his wife and children, unveiling a plaque at the
ancestral home. “It was the greatest festival we ever had,” Betty says. It had been the
most high-profile Ford visit since Jun 21, 2004 when Edsel II, son of Henry II, called in.
There might not be only a modest get-together tonight to mark Henry Ford’s 150th, but
the community celebrated earlier this month, when around two dozen Model T Fords
veered off the main Bandon to Clonakilty road and pulled into the driveway of Hazel
Ford’s house just outside Ballinascarthy, en route to a festival in Clonakilty. In a way, the
cavalcade was yet another homecoming.
* A celebration of Henry Ford’s 150th birthday will take place tonight in the
Ballinascarthy Community Hall, with music, tea and a talk by local historian Timmy
Crowley. All are welcome.

Bandon/Overton and the first suspension waterwheel.

Near the end of the 1700s Thomas Hewes in Manchester started using cast-iron
components in water wheels that up to that time had been wooden and heavy. In 1802 he
installed what is believed to be the first suspension waterwheel (bicycle-type wheel, with
the power taken from gear teeth at the rim) in a £10,000 five floor cotton mill that George
Allman was building at Overton near Bandon to replace his cotton mill driven by horses.
The hubs of the surviving cast iron axle show that each hub carried spokes projecting
normal to the axis and also at an angle. The angled spokes would confer transverse
stiffness to the assembly, and in any case would be necessary for adjustment to get the
wheel running true. A photograph of the axle in situ, together with an excellent account
of Hewes' involvement and the significance of the installation is in the article below by
Rynne (show here?). The iron wheel was forty feet in diameter and so constructed that a
moderate stream of water enabled it to power the work of over 250 people. Though an
extension was added in 1820, and in 1929 the factory had 8420 mule and throstle
working spindles and 600 employees, it soon closed.

See: Grace’s Guide: British Industrial History.
and
Colin Rynne. 2004. 'Technological Innovation in the Early 19th Century Irish Cotton
Industry' - Overton Cotton mills, County Cork, Thomas Cheek Hewes and the origins of
the suspension waterwheel. In 'Industrial Archaeology: Future Directions' pp. 205-216.
Edited by Eleanor Casella and James Symonds, Springer Inc

More generally: C. Rynne 2006. Industrial Ireland. 1750-1930. An Archaeology.

Cornelius O’Sullivan was born in Bandon in 1842, and initially educated locally. He
went on to win a Gold Medal at the school of Mines in London, and in 1894 became head
brewer in Bass & Co. in Burton-on-Trent. On his death in 1907 his brother James
O’Sullivan became Head Brewer. Did they do any novel biochemistry/microbiology or
brewing?

Computer software and big data storage: Einstein or at least a derivative of his
famous formula in West of Ballincollig (EMC2)

stylized as EMC² by the EMC Corporation which was founded in 1979 by Egan and
Marino (the E and M in EMC). The company specializes in …. In 2015, their European
headquarters to the West of Ballincollig employed …. of their total worldwide workforce
of ….. (the Ballincollig facility opened in ).

? Gerry Wrixon, Farran (and later Sandycove, Kinsale) and his team started a heavily
industry-linked microelectronics institute in the old Maltings building across the road
from the Mercy hospital in Cork. In 2004 this became the Tyndall National Institute
(named after the Carlow-born physicist, John Tyndall).

3.. LIFE DELIGHTS IN LIFE: Life Sciences / Relevance of the mindset associated with
finding new species and studying lifecycles, to knowledge of evolution. Onwards to
medical relevance and molecular understanding.

“The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are
put together.” C. Sagan,

Curiosity about the species around us lead to natural classification ceasing to be merely
descriptive and became explanatory by revealing evolutionary interpretations. The
earliest known account of the Flora and Fauna of the region is in the first part of the
Zoilomastix by (Don) Philip O’Sullivan Beare in the 1620s, which was translated and
republished by Denis C. O’Sullivan with the name “The Natural History of Ireland”
(2009. Cork University Press). It is an interesting overview (though a certain person
wishes to point out that the statement in it “about wolves “As to their flesh, I have learned
that certain people who have eaten it have had their hair fall out” cannot be the only
reason for such a “distinction”! By the mid 1800s classification of species visible with
the naked eye and curiosity about explanations for the macro-level diversity was at its
peak with some of it occurring in West Cork (Photo from page 55 of the Book “Secrets of
the Irish Landscape” edited by Matthew Jebb and Colm Crowley. 2013 by Atrium, an
imprint of Cork University Press. – Colm Crowley lives in West Cork with his wife Karla
and their children – he is Producer/Director of the accompanying RTE series.) Even more
significant activity occurred in nearby Cobh with the work of J. Vaughan Thompson
(born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1779, studied Medicine in Edinburgh before being
posted as a surgeon to the army in Cork in 1816. One of his findings in Cork was that
barnacles were crustaceans (like crabs and lobsters) and not molluscs (mussels, snails,
cuttlefish). This was important precursor work for the 8 years Charles Darwin later spent
working on barnacles and he took Thompson’s book from Cork on his famous sea trip.
The relevance was the role it played in shaping Darwin’s appreciation that natural
variation was not meaningless noise helped prepare him for the biggest discovery ever in
the life Sciences. Earlier on a voyage from Mauritius to Europe, Thompson developed a
plankton net and a continuous plankton sampler. This was first extensively used off the
Cork coastline from his base in Cobh. There is a link to the Sherkin island Marine Station
of Matt Murphy and his colleagues, as they have the most continuous and extensive
plankton collections in Ireland with its study be relevant to the red tide (see below).

The flora in the West Cork region studied by the individuals mentioned here
includes curiosities. It turns out that twelve plant species, including the strawberry tree,
Arbutus unedo, in the Southwest and West of Ireland are not found elsewhere in Northern
Europe. Based on comparisons of their DNA with plants of the same species in Spain/

Portugal, their ancestors almost certainly came from the Iberian peninsula after the last
ice age (the name “Lusitanian flora” for these plants derives from the ancient Roman
name for what is now Portugal). Recent DNA evidence shows that other plants in the
Southwest, including oaks, derive from the same area. Until recently it had been assumed
that oaks came via brief land bridges to Britain and from there to France at the end of the
last ice age. In addition to some of our flora originating from the North West of the
Iberian peninsula, what is now the Basque region was also one of the refuges for humans
driven South by the ice age. Their descendents are the likely origin of a substantial part of
the population of Ireland and Western Britain (Figure ??? on page 366 from 2015 Science
vol. 349, 362-366 in article Revolution in human evolution by Ann Gibbons) People of
course influenced the landscape in major ways as well as leaving indications of climatic
changes since their arrival. Plants too have helped to reveal much of the past of our
region with the preservative power of bogs permitting both the counting of pollen types
from various eras as well yield a tree ring record of yearly growth patterns (Figure from
pages 2 and 118 of book “Secrets of the Irish Landscape showing a tree stump recovered
from a bog – is it pine or oak or get a photo of oak from the bog in Dunmanway, … and
the cut away tree rings … on the right panel contrasting with dry preservation; a
bristlecone pine from S.W. Utah). Note it is oak that was used in parts of ancient
buildings exposed to the weather and not pine since the latter did not last so long … and
this has proved used in dating a few very old buildings.

The study of previously unidentified species can, of course, have significance
beyond questions related to their origin and distribution. For instance, the work of
Charles Donovan from Leap (see below) had major medical significance .

In marked contrast by 2015, what was once the honour of naming new species
had sunk to the level of being able to purchase that “honour” for a ‘small rare’ species for
a few thousand euro on eBay (see go.nature.com/zig152 and also a letter by an EU
Commission Joint Research Centre scientist, Strona, G. Nature 523, 35). Professional
taxonomists take time to verify a candidate’s credentials and publish the results in a
systematic journal with low impact factor and with which they find it difficult to get
academic jobs)

This in no way detracts from the relevance of modern day species study for
instance involving changes from the consequence of human activity, be it chemical use to
increase agricultural output, fish farming, building a dam, or understanding the
consequences of human caused climate change by a whole host of activities. West Cork
examples of several are described below.

Since 1953 molecular understanding of the hereditary information, how it is
expressed to synthesize proteins, and how its study has brought understanding of the
relationship of all living things on this planet to a new level. West Cork born or based
scientists have played some role in this. This type of knowledge has lead to a whole new
type of industry and several examples of this are also described.

of species relates to the use of various chemical in Agriculture and elsewhere (see
Lough Hyne below)

B) Ballylickey’s plant illustrator overcomes difficulties to discover new
species

Part of an article from: Irish Examiner, Friday 12.09.2014 (12th Sept. 2014)
The Ballylickey botanist; the Skibbereen astronomer … Robert Hume highlights the lives and
achievements of three female scientists from Co. Cork, and the obstacles they faced to achieve
recognition of their work.

Visitors to the galleries of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew often pause to
admire the beautiful illustrations of ferns, lichens and seaweed etched by Ellen Hutchins
(1785-1815) from Ardnagashel, Ballylickey, Co. Cork, Ireland’s first woman botanist.

Yet Hutchins may never have developed an interest in botany at all if she had not
become ill when a schoolgirl in Dublin. A family friend and medical doctor, Whitley
Stokes, took her in, taught her to draw and paint, and enthused her with a passion for the
subject. Besides, an outdoor hobby such as plant collecting was thought to be the best
possible tonic to restore her health.

In those days, a girl’s education did not include university; nevertheless, Hutchins
succeeded in becoming an international authority on marine flora. On her walks along
Bantry Bay she discovered previously unknown species of mosses, liverworts, lichens
and algae, and established her own garden.

Prominent botanists abroad regularly corresponded with her, and exchanged
specimens of non-flowering plants. Despite its remoteness, several came to Bantry Bay to
meet her. Lewis Dillwyn and Joseph Woods, on a visit in 1809, considered her “almost
the best botanist, either Male or Female that we ever met with.”

Amongst other books, Hutchins contributed to James Mackay’s Flora Hibernica.
Her reputation became formidable: James Smith claimed she could find almost anything;
and William Hooker, overwhelmed by her contributions to his monograph on liverworts,
believed that “Miss Hutchins’ discoveries alone will form an appendix as large as the
work itself”.

However, as a young lady, she had to be modest about her accomplishments. Only
very reluctantly did she agree to have species named after her – three lichens and three
marine algae.

She was also expected to put her own interests to one side so as to nurse sick
members of her family – first, her paralysed brother, Thomas, who required round-the-
clock attention; later her elderly mother, with whom she moved to Bandon in 1813. When
she died Ellen returned to Bantry Bay, living at Ardnagashel.

After years of delicate health, Ellen’s life was tragically cut short when she
became ill with TB, from which she died in 1815, just before her 30th birthday.

Ellen Hutchins was buried in Bantry churchyard, a short walk from where she had
made her discoveries. A field in Ballylickey, where Hutchins spent many hours tending
plants, is known to this day as “Miss Ellen’s Garden”.

Other newspaper articles on Ellen Hutchins include:

Ballylickey’s famous botanist was among world’s finest plant experts, By

Robert Hume. The Southern Star. Saturday February 7, 2015. Ellen Hutchins: Discoverer
of new species and famed illustrator:

Irish Examiner, Farming: Country Living section pages 16 and 17. Thursday May 28,
2015. Article by Denise Hall ([email protected]) “Ellen Hutchins, a scientific maverick”
features a photograph of Madeline Hutchins who is working with Bantry Historical
Society on a celebration of her great grand aunt, the botanist Ellen Hutchins. This will be
shown during Ireland’s Heritage week, 2015. Madeline and her husband live in Sussex
and rented a cottage at Ardnagashel.

C) Study of Lough Hyne, A semi-enclosed marine lake (about 0.7km) near Skibbereen
and Baltimore, It was a fresh water lake until 4, 000 years ago when a connection with
the ocean opened up via a narrow opening that is also shallow. This constriction of tide
flow causes asymmetrical tide with water ebbing for 8.5 hours and flooding in for 4 hours
creating a “rapids”. The resulting highly oxygenated inflowing water wells up against a
cliff face creating a microhabitat. One of the several other microhabitats is a deep trough
below a mountain at the far side of the lake. With mixing during winter storms, water in
the lower part of the trough is oxygenated, but anaerobic conditions occur during summer
with drastic consequences for the fauna. Pioneering work on water layers, thermoclines,
was just one aspect of the research conducted in Lough Hyne for many years. This was
performed by John/ “Jack” A. Kitching, who also adopted unconventional approaches to
study the flora and fauna in the rapids. In 1932 he put a milk churn over his head to have
a supply of air and strolled underwater to study the kelp bed in the rapids. This was later
refined to a fish bowl helmet with a tube through which air was pumped by a student on a
stationary bicycle! Prof Trevor Norton (Port Erin Marine Lab and University of
Liverpool) has contributed detailed accounts of Kitching-era investigations of Lough
Hyne.

[Did construction of the wall on the western side of the entrance rapids in 1852
enhance oxygenation at whirlpool cliff and so help to create biodiversity. The wall was
rebuilt in 2006. Since it is artificial anyhow the speed of the rapids could have been
increased to rival or surpass that of the Bay of Fundy, Canada (by narrowing the opening
and/or have controlled elevating of the bottom – perhaps with hydroelectric power). This
would create a bonanza for marine ecologists who already had established baseline data!]

From its debut in 1913, expansion of industrial fixation of atmospheric nitrogen to
generate a compound that yields nutritionally of nitrate to enhance the amount available
for synthesis of components of RNA, DNA and protein, has had major impacts. While
agricultural fertilizers have great increased food production, the run-off from excess
applications has, among other consequences, lead to algal blooms. Dr. Rob McAllen
(UCC) and his colleagues have found that the Lough Hyne marine reserve water has
elevated nitrate, but surprisingly that it does not come from the streams or fields feeding
directly into the Lough, but rather from the sea outside. Despite the strong Atlantic
currents, tides and turbulence, the whole coastal zone has elevated nitrate due to
extensive fertilizer run-off.

New species: An enormous number of species known, though mainly in the
tropics (how long post ice-age and with winters will it take mid-latitude temperate
regions to “catch up”?). Given this vast number, one could question the significance of
finding a new species. However, it is well to remember that inquisitiveness about nature
lead to the key evolutionary concept by Darwin and Wallace, and numerous
unpredictable other highly positive consequences- plus knowledge relevant to the climate
change underway. James J. Bell & David K.A. Barnes (UCC) identified in Lough Hyne a
new sponge species ( 2000. A sponge diversity centre within a marine ‘island’.
Hydrobiologia 44, 55-64). Cynthia Trowbridge and Colin Little have discovered in
Lough Hyne a new nudibranch species (unpublished).

Similarity of intake to Salmon Research Trust except there a layer of sea water under the
fresh water in layers.

Colm S. O’hUigin, TCD Genetics Dept. graduate who is now in NIH and whose mother
came from near Lough Hyne where his two uncles now are.

D) Sherkin island marine station
Matt Murphy, a brother of Noel Murphy, the Cork Constitution rugby player who went
on captain the Irish team on 6 occasions, also had a remarkable career. He had the
innovative idea that many, especially from abroad, would like to rent their own
accommodation equipped horse drawn caravans to tour West Cork at a leisurely pace.
From village near Fermoy he organized this and reputedly had up to 70 such caravans
rented at its peak – this took a lot of organization. One of the stories involves a German

family who had a very enjoyable trip, but after their return of the horse drawn caravan
found that the key of the barn in which they had somehow become locked into had
somehow become “lost”. Presumably they did not know that the travel agent through
which they had booked the trip, was notorious for not paying agreed fees, and the fees
“happened” not to have come through on this occasion. The German ambassador in
Dublin was summoned to “help in finding the keys”. If the abandoned West Cork railway
line had been available for this venture, it might have developed into a major long term
tourist attraction, but increasing traffic and slow moving vehicles on West Cork roads
was not a good combination. The business failed, and in 1975 Matt and his family moved
to Sherkin island off Baltimore, where, with virtually no financial assets, he started a
marine station. As large numbers of ex-participants of the marine station gathered from
around the world in May in Sherkin with Matt and his family on the 40th anniversary of
the founding of the station, they had a lot to celebrate. The “can do” spirit, a feature of
the station prevailed, and even though many of the “bods” as they had been known while
at the station, were by then in senior positions in their own countries, all joined in to do
whatever was needed without being asked, whether it was something as simple as moving
tables did not matter.

One of the research highlights of the centre was been the systematic collection
and formalin-based storage of water samples from various depths since 1978 on a very
long term basis to facilitate understanding of “red tide” harmful algal blooms. The initial
motivation was a red tide episode and the thought by M. Murphy (and involving a
discussion with former Trinity College Zoology lecturer Brian West from Midleton) that
sporadic and quick sampling could miss some relevant parameters). The results is a
collection that has no rival in Ireland. One of the publications from this partially
emanating from the University of Oslo, was Dale, Barrie & Murphy, Matt (2014). A
retrospective appraisal of the importance of high-resolution sampling for harmful algal
blooms: Lessons from long-term phytoplankton monitoring at Sherkin Island, S.W.
Ireland. Harmful Algae. ISSN 1568-9883. 40, s 23- 33 . doi:10.1016/j.hal.2014.09.007

One of the features of the marine station was the adventure camps for children,
including Evening Echo sales boys from Cork, up to 1990 organized by Matt’s daughter
Audrey, and the various talks and online material since including that at
[email protected] . The quarterly “Sherkin Comment” is remarkable. Continuing
activities of another daughter Susan Murphy Wickens, the display organized by one of
his son’s at The “Islander’s Rest” restaurant and lodging, and the efforts of many others
ensures a continuing valuable resource.

Need to check http://streamscapes.ie/ and Coomhola Salmon Trust Mark ? star March
14, 2015. … Mark Boyden

E) Leap and the discovery of the medically important species, Leishmania

donovanii).

Charles Donovan, from Leap (between Skibbereen and Clonakilty) graduated M.D. at

the Royal University of Ireland in 1889. Soon afterwards he entered the Indian Medical

service, where in 1903 he was co-discoverer of Leishmania donovanii and had a strong
claim to be co-discoverer of the whole Leishmania genus of trypanosomatid protozoa –
which are major causes of disease.
Leishman-Donovan bodies are small round or oval bodies found in the spleen and liver of
patients suffering from kalaazar, a tropical disease characterized by anaemia, irregularly
remittent fever, and emaciation. The bodies are the intra-cellular forms of the protozoan
parasite Leishmania donovani, which causes the disease.

On his own in 1905, Donovan found the cause of granuloma inguinale, a venereal
disease rarely seen in England until the West Indians began to immigrate in substantial
numbers (1956-1958). Granuloma inguinale is caused by Donovania granulomatis, he
held the post of Professor of Physiology at Madras College. Donovan was convinced that
carriers of many of the tropical diseases in the Madras Residency were to be found
among the denizens of the jungle, and he spent his holidays collecting blood slides to
prove the existence of monkey malaria. On retirement he lived in England but visited
Leap frequently before he died in 1951.

Include the picture of Major Donovan …. From the pdf.

) Stability and variation in the billions of years flow of RNA and DNA hereditary
INFORMATION,: Dynamic enrichment of its expression into protein, and
manipulation (Inchigeela and Dunmanway).

.

Roddy (Roderick) J. O’Sullivan (Assistant Professor, Dept. Pharmacology & Chemical
Biology, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute). Roddy came from the Lake hotel in
Inchigeela (which received lots of supplies from 2 firms in Dunmanway!). He graduated
from the TCD Genetics Department in 2002, got his Ph.D. at the Institute for Molecular

Pathology in Vienna in 2006 and did his postdoc at the Salk Institute in La Jolla close to

San Diego (2006-2014).
O’Sullivan, R.J. and Almouzni, G. 2014. Assembly of telomeric chromatin to create
ALTernative endings. Trends Cell Biol. in press.
O’Sullivan, R.J. et al., 2013. Rapid induction of the alternative lengthening of telomeres
pathway by depletion of the histone chaperone ASF1. Nature Structure Mol. Biol. 21,
167-174.
O’Sullivan, R. and Karlseder, J. 2012. The great unravelling: Chromatin as a modulator
of the aging process. Trends Biochemical Sciences 37, 466-476.
Corpet, A. ….. O’Sullivan, R.J. et al., 2011. Asf1b, the necessary Asf1 isoform for
proliferation, is predictive of outcome in breast cancer. EMBO J 30:480-493.
Flynn, R.L. …… O’Sullivan, R.J. et al., 2011. TERRA and hnRNPA1 orchestrate an
RPA-to-POT1 switch on telomeric single-stranded DNA. Nature 471:532-526.

O'Sullivan RJ and Karlseder J. 2010. Telomeres: protecting chromosomes against
genome instability. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 11:171-181.
O’Sullivan RJ, Kubicek S, Schreiber SL and Karlseder J. 2010. Reduced histone
biosynthesis and chromatin changes arising from a damage signal at telomeres. Nat Struct
Mol Biol 17:1218-1226.
Kubicek, S., O'Sullivan, R.J. et al., 2007. Reversal of H3K9me2 by a small-molecule
inhibitor for the G9a histone methyltransferase. Mol Cell 25:473-481.

Finding, deciphering and manipulating the dynamic expanded code that enriches
gene expression.

John F. Atkins (born Dunmanway, UCC/ Biochemistry Department/School, 1981-85 and
2004-? Lecturer and Research Professor, respectively – for the second part of the latter he
resided in Dunmanway where much of the electronic work was performed).

Perhaps somewhere mention Susan Walsh who got an interest in forensics in part from
her Garda father in Youghal, graduated from UCC Biochemistry Dept., got a Ph.D. in
Rotterdam in 2013, and now has a position in a University in Indiana where she is
predicting eye colour with a 75-90% accuracy from the analysis of 6 SNPs in DNA.

G) Utilization of the knowledge for human benefit via pharma/biotech in Brinny
near Bandon, Dundurrow near Kinsale, Ringaskiddy and Balineen).

Interferon and MSD, Brinny, North of Bandon:. In London in 1957 an activity in
media in which inactivated flu virus had been grown was found to inhibit growth of an
active virus and called interferon. By 1980 after a herculean effort to purify a minute
amount of an interferon protein to get sequence information that would guide a search
for its coding sequence, a group in Zurich succeeded in isolating the encoding gene.
There was a big hope that subsequent commercially production would lead to it dealing
with viral infections in a counterpart way to the use of penicillin, and ultimately other
antibiotics, for treating bacterial infections. In 1986, the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration gave Schering-Plough approval to market interferon (alfa-2b) which was

synthesized from chimeric DNA (also known as recombinant DNA). Because of grossly
exaggerated controversy over the safety of recombinant DNA, there was great secrecy
with the plans for Schering-Plough to produce interferon from recombinant DNA in
their plant in Brinny, North West Of Bandon, but there was no objections and the
synthesis of human interferon in a bacterium was one of the very first such products
following the first one, human insulin, for the treatment of diabetes. Though the initial
hopes of dramatic effects for the general treatment of viral infections quickly
evaporated, increasing constructive uses were found for the first isolated, and
subsequently other types of interferon, synthesized by organisms grown in Brinny (the
initial one being for a rare form of leukemia). When the lead scientist responsible for
initially isolating the tiniest trace of interferon that permitted cloning of the encoding
gene, visited the plant in Brinny, it almost brough tears to his eyes to see a table-full
spoon of the product synthesized from routine growth in E. coli! Schering-Plough was
taken over by MSD (Merck Sharpe and Dohme).

Eli Lilly Dunderrow between Innishannon and Kinsale: Since 2011 it has been
producing monoclonal antibodies and for longer it has been manufacturing small
molecule ingredients of medicines. Currently about 400 employees.

Carbery Group (formerly Carbery milk products established in 1965) facility
between Ballineen and Dunmanway. Unlike many other countries there are no ancient
iconic cheese varieties. By modern standards in 1970 the few types of Irish cheese
available were surprisingly unappealing given the extent of milk production and the
formerly strong butter exports. The importation of some starter cultueres was just one
component of a changes that completely reversed the situation. Carbery makes various
Cheddar cheeses, Dubliner cheese, nutritional ingredients, including whey proteins,
sports foods, complete nutritional formulations, flavours, functional ingredients and
ethanol etc. By 2015 it had major holdings in Brazil in a Synergy Flavours facility and
also in Nutrifont which combines whey processing with added ingredients for the infant
formula, bakery and sports medicine sectors.

Leather. There is no indication of any scientific development associated with the

formerly important leather industry is several West Cork towns. However, it is

interesting that at least the Dunmanway tannery actively exported to the shoe

manufacturing companies in Northampton, the then centre of shoe manufacturing in

Britain. Well into its second century, did some of the leather from the J. Atkins & Co.

tannery in Dunmanway at its peak in the 1880s get to the newly started Latimer, Crick

and Gunn boot and shoe factory? The Walter Crick involved had only a rudimentary

education, but on a Sunday in 1882 while looking for water beetles, found a cockle
attached to a dead frog that led to a publication by Darwin (6th April 1882.Nature 25,

529) just before his death. Walter’s grandson was Francis Crick, the pioneer of genetic

decoding (fortunately for John F. Atkins, Francis Crick wrote a Foreword for The RNA

World book he co-edited in 1993, and was able to use in subsequent editions also).

4. THE LAND & SEA/ ENVIRONMENT (Beneficial use with the need to preserve for
the future)

A) Geological maps

B) Copper and barium sulphate. Allihies, Schull, Glandore etc
Copper and barium sulphate (barytes) was deposited in the West Cork mountains as they
were forming 300 million years ago. Some copper mining occurred in prehistoric times.
However, the main mining period started in 1812, peaked in the 1840s and ‘50s and
strongly declined in the 1860s. Many of the lead miners came from Cornwall with a
substantial number being employed and going to Butte, Montana on the demise of West
Cork mining. The main mining was of copper, but barium sulphate mining feature to a
lesser extent with a very small amount of others (including manganese around Glandore).
The book “The Metal Mines of West Cork” by Diane Hodnett with photographs and field
surveys by Paddy O’Sullivan, published by The Trevithick Society in 2010 gives an
authoritative description, and the Allihies Mining museum opened by President
McAleese in 2007 gives a fine display. . A “man-engine” for bringing miners to the
surface was installed at the Mountain mine (Allihies area) in 1862 (the mine was 768 feet
or meters deep). It was the only one in Ireland, there being 30 in the whole of Europe
including the 16 in Cornwall from where following the crash in copper prices in 1866,
thousands emigrated.

Preserving Lough Hyne In 1981, designated as Europe’s first marine nature reserve.

Where was next?

Preserving feed for whales, other marine life and seabirds,

Destruction of the Geragh near Macroom for how much electricity?

Influence of human action on the natural world and how deleterious impacts can be
ameliorated.

Species preservation/fresh water mussels/sprat, whale and mackerel food: Humans
are rapidly acquiring increasing control over planet earth and all other life forms. We are
also increasing the proportion of human DNA compared that of the combined total of
other multicellular organisms (7 billion people and rising rapidly especially in countries
with few emigration possibilities). So the protection of certain whole habitats in their
natural state acquires increasing importance. In the West Cork area the protection
afforded Lough Hyne is a very positive example. In contrast the fabulous Geragh ancient
river forest in the River Lee valley was destroyed in connection with the Carrigadrohid
dam which yields a marginal amount of hydroelectric power (about big windmill’s worth)
though it does enable more continuous higher water levels for the downstream Inniscarra
dam enabling it to produce moderately more electricity (to realize its full 5 windmill
equivalent capacity) by focussing less on flood control capacity. Of course windmill
potential was not appreciated when Carrigadrohid (Carrig an Droichead) dam was
finished in 1958.

(Later) An articles in the Southern Star on Saturday March 21, 2015 entitled “The
Geragh salmon movie gets Bantry showing” says that a showing of the film “River
Runner” will be held in Bantry cinemax on March 22. It refers to the clear felling of one
of Ireland’s most unique ecological features – an inland forest delta and one of only four
in the world. It refers to it as pristine spawing grounds for thousands of wild atlantic
salmon. It had hundreds of thousands of clusters of fresh water pearl mussels carried by
the returning salmon. And, due to its shaded tree coverage, and inaccessible nature home
to a unique fresh water sponge , there was a diversity of wild bird, beaver and otter
families in this special habitat (I am not sure about beavers???). In recent times there has

been a noticeable drop in the water level in The Geragh near Macroom according to the
fil’s director Declan O’Mahony.

This as described in detail in the film is allowing the wooded islands to grow
back’ he told the Star this week.

We have had no official contact or confirmation yet from the responsible
authorities, he added ‘ but our ecology expert Kevin Corcoran who lives on the periphery
of The Geragh, and has campaigned for its preservation and protection for over thirty
years, has confirmed my own sightings.

Delete all the dam section? No?
Arguably focusing preserving whole habitats is better than on one individual
species though in practice the latter achieves the former. The most poignant single such
species in West Cork may be fresh water mussels. In Denis J. O’Donoghue’s 1970
booklet on “History of Bandon” he cites that that in October 1634 the first Earl of Cork
recorded “I bought of my cousin John Bardsey of Bandon-bridge goldsmith 25 lardg
pearles taken in my river of the Bandon, which I bestowed on my daughter Dongarvan
and I paid him for them £35.” At the time a good cow would have cost ???. A more
recent story of the mussels that in the distant past yielded such then valuable pearals can
be illustrated by the islands in the Bandon river adjacent to Dunmanway. About 15 years
after buying it in 1953, there was initially different views between two members of the
owner family whether or not to deepen a single channel and turn all the rest into a single
field – there was then no restriction on doing such “drainage and improvement”.
However, after a constructive debate, consensus was reached that it was more important
to preserve the area in its natural state as a sort of “mini-Geragh”. 40 or so years later as
Ireland was nudged by the EU to clean up its rivers and protect some sensitive species,
zealous preservation rules of the fresh water mussels in these same islands area, meant
that Ironically, as the EU “encouraged” habitat and species conservation in its
constituent countries, the fresh water mussels in the islands were so protected that the
pendulum swung to the point where the same owner family were restricted from cutting
branches in the outside rivers that would reduce serious flooding of adjacent areas.
Preservation of adequate quantities of sprats and spawning herring is important
for several reasons including serving as food for the giant fin whales, very large

humpback and also minke whales and other species that grace Irish waters in such a
dramatic manner. Simon Duggan’s photo of a humpback whale off Baltimore “Look
behind you” here.

5. TOWARDS THE FUTURE WITH AN EYE ON THE PAST: Writing Science Tales
of Tomorrow / Human relationships and the origin of the term “social sciences”
Glandore. Origin of the term “Social Science” and a short-term controversial
“experiment”.

William Thompson, was the originator of the term “social science”, for which he
generated a new synthesis, and of what was essentially a communist commune in
Glandore in 1830 when Karl Marx was 12 years old. . William, the son and heir of a
prosperous Mayor of Cork, was born in 1775. His ideas influenced the Cooperative,
Trade union and Chartist movements as well as Karl Marx. He died in Rosscarbery
1833.His attempt to will his estate to the cooperative movement after his death sparked
the longest court case in Irish legal history as other family members tried to have it
annulled. He recognised that unrestrained population growth did pose the threat of rising
poverty. As such he was an advocate of the benefits of contraception and voting rights for
women. In 2001 Drinagh Co-Op sponsored the erection by a Rosscarbery historical
school of a memorial wall and plaque 6km from Leap and 16km from Dunmanway on
the most direct road between them (about 2? km from Connonagh Village,Gortroe and
after the turn off from the N71 from Leap).
What is the photograph of in the article by Robert Hume in the Irish Examiner on
November 20, 2014?
http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/features/west-corks-john-thompson-was-the-
original-rebel-with-a-cause-298604.html

4. Rosscarbery and financial rewards of biotechnology performed elsewhere.
A) Castle (re)building - restoration of a previously owned family castle

Mr. Stephen Evans-Freke, youngest son of the 11th Lord Carbery, is a veteran
biotech investor, and has served on the Development boards of major Biotech firms
including Genentech in San Francisco. One of the companies he founded – it was done
jointly with two molecular biologists – was Sugen (1991 in California). It was acquired
Pharmacia & Upjohn in 1999 in a stock swap valued at $650 and closed down in 2003,
with the loss of about 350 employees due to rearrangements following the Pfizer-
Pharmacia merger. Sugen pioneered protein kinases as therapeutic targets and developed
the successful cancer therapy, sunitinib (Sutent). Sugen employed Gerard Manning, the
UCC graduate biochemist, who in 2002 had a very important paper in Science from
Sugen on the human kinases, before joining the Salk Institute and later Genentech (in
2011 he co-authored research findings with John Atkins of Dunmanway). In 1999, Mr.
Evans-Freake acquired Castlefreke castle, Rosscarbery. The original castle on this site
was a 15th Century tower house belonging to Barry family. It was occupied by the Frekes
in 1617, destroyed by Cromwellian forces in 1648, rebuild in 1780, altered in 1820,
gutted by fire in 1910, refurbished and sold in 1919 later ending in the procession of the
Irish Land Commission (Stephen’s great uncle in 1914 performed in his monoplane the
first first 'loop the loop' aerobatic display in Ireland at Clonakilty agricultural show).
Some of the proceeds of Stephen Evan-Freke’s biotech and pharmaceutical investing and
leadership are doubtless contributing to the cost of the restoration of Castlefreke castle
that commenced in 2005. (Photo of castle and also the funeral cortege … a quote from
Lady Carbery’s book?).

11) Funding and support for science over the decades

Relevant to sections 1 and 2 is that there was a hiatus in science funding from the 1920 to

the 1960s and it was intermittent and modest from then via successively (with gaps), the

National Science Council, the National Board for Science and Technology, ?? Eolas

until 2001 when with the formation of Science Foundation Ireland, much higher level

funding was put in place and sustained despite a severe economic downturn though what

was fundable was constrained to more applied topics.

12) A counterpart to serious science: A “take-off”/ skit of the awarding each year of

Nobel prizes is the igNobel prizes for “wacky” experiments that are so far out that they

are often amusing http://www.improbable.com/ig/2014/. Nominations are needed for

West Cork counterparts.

13) Winners at the 2014 World Google Science Fair – Young scientist competition

and also winners of the European Young scientist prize:. Clara Judge, Sophie Healy-

Thow and Emer Hickey (Kinsale Community School)

Mary O’Donovan and the poem/essay on DNA and RNA. Give a link to it elsewhere on
the screen.

……………………………………………………………………………………………..
Extra material:

OLLSCOIL na hÉIREANN. NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY:
DR. MICHAEL B. MURPHY, President, University College Cork on 2 December 2013
in the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, on the occasion of the conferring of the
Degree of Science, honoris causa, on
PROFESSOR SÉAMUS DAVIS
A Sheansailéir, a mhuintir na hOllscoile agus a dhaoine uaisle,
Séamus Davis is one of the world’s most accomplished physicists. When he chose to
leave Berkeley for Cornell ten years ago, the Los Angeles Times, on July 14, 2003,
carried a major article lamenting the demise of Physics in the jewel of the University of
California system, and the potential scale of consequent economic loss to the state.
He was born in Skibbereen, in 1961 to a family of renowned footballers. His father and
two uncles played for O’Donovan Rossa while three first cousins were Cork County
Senior players. His uncle Seamus, for whom he is named, was a locally celebrated, poet,
musician and seanachai.
At St. Fachtnas De La Salle School in Skibbereen, his teacher Liam O’Donovan, a
footballing friend of Séamus’ father, nurtured in him a passion for mathematics and
physics. Seamus also admits indebtedness to Patricia Boland who tutored him in public
speaking and debating, skills he has since employed in delivering over 500 invited
lectures at the world’s greatest universities.
In 1978 he was admitted to UCC to study Physics under the tutelage of Prof. Frank Fahy.
Fahy was without peer, in that era, in nurturing creativity and fostering excellence and
ambition in small classes of hand-picked students.

Among Seamus’s contemporaries in the laboratories were Richard Milner, today Head of
the Laboratory for Nuclear Science at MIT, Margaret Murnane, Professor of Physics at
the University of Colorado, Member of the US National Academy of Sciences and
current Chair of President Obama’s National Medal of Science Committee, and Frank’s
own son Stephen, today a Professor of Physics at UCC following a distinguished career
at the University of Michigan.
After graduation from Cork in 1983, Seamus went to Berkeley to read for a PhD. in
Berkeley had been one of the most important physics departments of the 20th century.
EO Lawrence invented the particle accelerator there and J.R. Oppenheimer led the
development of the first atomic bomb from Berkeley. More elementary particles and new
elements were discovered at Berkeley than anywhere else in the world; the imprint of the
Big Bang on the cosmic microwave background radiation and the accelerating expansion
of the universe were also discovered at Berkeley.
So where does Seamus fit in the cosmos? Best to use his own words – I quote.
“Everything around us, everything each of us has ever experienced, and virtually
everything underpinning our technological society and economy is governed by quantum
mechanics. Yet this most fundamental physical theory of nature often feels as if it is a set
of somewhat eerie and counterintuitive ideas of no direct relevance to our lives. Why is
this? One reason is that we cannot perceive the strangeness (and astonishing beauty)
of the quantum mechanical phenomena around us by using our own senses.” So, a theme
of Séamus’ work has been to reject the idea that the quantum world is forever hidden
from human senses and to develop new ways of perceiving its amazing effects. One of
Seamus’ major discoveries at Berkeley in the late 1990’s was the ‘Superfluid Josephson
Effect’. Richard Feynman and Brian Josephson had predicted in the 1960’s, that the
macroscopic quantum dynamics of a superfluid could be revealed as a pure musical tone
that should be generated spontaneously by pressurizing the quantum fluid. Seamus
developed the complex instrumentation necessary and eventually discovered this
quantum sound - the first time that a quantum mechanical phenomenon was experienced
by one of the human senses.

Séamus then became fascinated by the challenge of visualizing quantum
mechanics. In the early 2000’s, he invented the ‘spectroscopic imaging scanning

tunneling microscope’ an instrument that allows the quantum ‘matter waves’ of electrons
to be visualized (and even converted into movies), revealing many amazing and exotic
quantum effects. Today he is leading the world in applying his science to discover
compounds that will exhibit superconductivity at room temperature, allowing the passage
of electricity without loss of energy – a holy grail of science for economic and social
benefit.

Seamus’ work is utterly “ground-breaking”. He has authored over 30 papers in
Science and Nature, the two foremost scientific journals in the world. His many honours
include Loeb Lecturer in Physics at Harvard, Einstein Lecturer at the Weizmann Institute
in Israel, Ehrenfest Lecturer at Leiden University and the Von Borries Lecture at
Tubingen. In 2005 he was awarded the Fritz London Memorial Prize, the greatest honour
in Low Temperature Physics. Of the 48 awardees since 1957, 20 have been Nobel
Laureates. In 2009 he received the Kamerlingh Onnes Prize named for the Nobel
Laureate who discovered superconductivity.

A winner of the National Science Foundation Young Investigator award in his
early days, he has become a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and of the American
Physical Society. In 2010, he was one of the youngest physicists ever elected to the US
National Academy of Sciences.

Seamus remained at Berkeley for almost 20 years, becoming a full Professor and
Faculty Physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. But he also found time
to marry - Kathy Selby, herself a physicist at UC San Francisco, and they had two sons.
In 2003 Seamus and Kathy swapped the West for the East Coast to be closer to Europe
(their home) and to give the kids the chance for a rural upbringing that they themselves
had enjoyed.

Moving to New York, both were awarded professorships at Cornell University
at Ithaca, he as Professor of Physics and a Senior Physicist at Brookhaven National
Laboratory. Today, he holds a Distinguished Research Professorship at St. Andrews
University, Scotland, on a part-time basis.

Kathy’s real vocation is the fiddle. Trained in classical violin, she had never
considered traditional fiddle music until one day, she visited Séamus Davis senior on his
farm in Lisheen near Skibbereen. Knowing that she was a musician, he played some

traditional Irish tunes for her on his flute. From that day she became a fanatical traditional
musician, dedicated to learning, preserving and playing the fiddle music of Ireland,
Scotland and New England. Nowadays she has a full performance schedule throughout
the academic year in New England, and another one throughout West Cork during the
summers.

Seamus’ extended family live in West Cork where Kathy and Séamus now spend
every summer with their boys Michael and Owen. I am delighted to welcome Séamus’
sister Denise Collis along with her husband Mark, his brothers Michael and Joe along
with their spouses Joan and Maeve, to today’s ceremony. To quote Seamus, “All have
been amazingly patient, over the years, with a mad scientist for a brother! “
Mad, or otherwise, Seamus Davis is one of the most accomplished Irish university
graduates of the 20th century and I have the honour of presenting him to you Chancellor
for the conferment of the University’s highest accolade – a Doctorate in Science.