Visiting South African scientist, Kit Vaughan, assesses the state of scientificresearch in Ireland at the end of a 12-month sabbatical in the country.
It has been my good fortune to spend 2003 doing research here in Ireland. Along with Prof Mark O'Malley, of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at University College Dublin (UCD), we have been developing mathematical models of the neuromuscular system.
As my sabbatical year draws to a close, it seems apt for me to reflect on my experience and to consider the question: What is the current state of scientific research in Ireland? I have chosen four lectures held over the past year as the framework for my answer.
January 20th, 2003: As part of the process for appointing a new professor in bioinformatics, UCD held an afternoon of seminars, with each of five candidates presenting a public lecture. In preparation for the lecture by Dr Desmond Higgins, of University College Cork, I performed a Science Citation Index search of his publications.
What I discovered was astonishing. One of his papers, describing the development of a computer programme to perform genetic sequencing and based on his doctoral studies at Trinity College Dublin in the late 1980s, had garnered over 10,000 citations. In comparison, less than 1 per cent of papers get 50 citations. His total citation count was more than 20,000 and that almost certainly makes him the most highly cited Irish scientist in history.
April 28th, 2003: Fifty years ago, Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA and published their findings in Nature. To celebrate this milestone, James Watson was invited to speak in Dublin by TCD's genetics department.
Watson spoke animatedly to a large audience, describing in fascinating detail the groundbreaking work that took place at Cambridge University half a century ago. He told us that both he and Francis Crick had been inspired by the book What is Life? which Erwin Schrödinger had written during the second World War when he was a Fellow at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. So, the American Nobel laureate in physiology invoked the Austrian Nobel laureate in physics to make an Irish connection.
Unfortunately, he failed to acknowledge that Schrödinger's celebrated research on quantum mechanics was built on mathematical foundations pioneered by Dublin's own William Rowan Hamilton. Alas poor Hamilton, a mathematical giant of the 19th century, warrants only 15 lines in the new Encyclopaedia of Ireland.
May 28th, 2003: The Irish Medical Devices Association (IMDA) met in Bunratty, Co Clare, to discuss the challenges facing an industry that has contributed to the much-vaunted, though now increasingly maligned, Celtic Tiger. With more than 15,000 employees, and exports exceeding €3 billion a year, IMDA's member companies are concerned that these high-paying manufacturing jobs will be moved offshore.
One of their invited speakers was Dr William Harris, director general of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), who described the exciting programmes that SFI has established. The funding available to individual investigators is extraordinary - €250,000 per annum - although the emphasis, quite correctly, is on outstanding quality. Only the very best science is supported.
This funding is considerably more than the average grant awarded by the National Institutes of Health in the US. Bill Harris also told us about a dinner he had recently hosted in Philadelphia for young Irish postgraduate students and research fellows who, despite his best efforts, were sceptical about the Irish Government's long-term commitment to science.
October 8th, 2003: The Royal Irish Academy presented the Parsons Award in Engineering Sciences in honour of Irishman Charles Algernon Parsons who in 1884 created the world's first practical steam turbine generator. The medal for 2003 went to Prof Patrick Prendergast of TCD's department of mechanical engineering and, when presented with the award, he gave a lecture entitled Life and limb: the bioengineering of prostheses and implants.
It was a tour de force, ranging in subject matter from artificial shoulder joints to prosthetic ear implants, and from cardiovascular stents to the mathematical modelling of cells. It was, quite simply, the best lecture I have ever attended, anywhere in the world. As I told Paddy afterwards, he captured perfectly the reason why many of us choose a life in science.
The poet Brendan Kennelly wrote this about Ernest Walton, Ireland's 1951 Nobel laureate in physics, during Walton's last days in a Belfast nursing home:
Strange, how so few eyes bother to look at even the brightest stars
In answer to my earlier question, I would say that Irish science is alive and well. Believe in yourselves, compete internationally, and then recognise and reward the pockets of excellence that so obviously exist in your academic institutions.
Prof Christopher (Kit) Vaughan is the Hyman Goldberg Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Cape Town. He has lived and worked in Dublin for the past 12 months as a recipient of an Ernest Walton Fellowship, funded by Science Foundation Ireland.