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The First Scientific Investigation of a Bog Body, 1781
Bogs are curious places. They spark memories of Irish childhood summers spent footing and saving turf amid swarms of midges. They inspire awe and alarm as nature’s own carbon-capture technology, but rapidly disappearing. For others, bogs are political landscapes that evoke anger, as age-old turbary rights appear threatened by the urgency of conservation. In the…
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Cynthia Longfield, Madam Dragonfly
”I find machetes so useful in the jungle, don’t you?” Cynthia Longfield, quoted in The Times, 9 July 1991 Cynthia Longfield, ‘Madam Dragonfly’, was born in London in 1896. Her home schooling there was interrupted by regular visits to her maternal grandparents’ farm in Cloyne, Co. Cork, where she enjoyed roaming the countryside. Her early love of…
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Scientific Travels in Nineteenth-Century Donegal
Donegal welcomed some notable scientific travellers in the nineteenth century. They were drawn to the region principally because it was, in the words of one of the era’s most celebrated scientists, Humphry Davy, ‘in many respects peculiar and out of the track of ordinary tourists.’[1] These people were attracted by what they saw as the…
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Catharine Parr Traill, Author of Natural Histories for Children
Catharine Parr Traill (1802-1899) was a prolific author who published children’s books, emigrants’ guides, and popular natural histories. Under the name Catharine Parr Strickland, she published at least 15 moral tales and natural histories for children between 1818 and 1831. Catherine had a great deal of knowledge about natural history, and in her books she…
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Celebrating International Women’s Day 2023
As ever, my thoughts today are with women worldwide living through displacement, war, hunger and inequality. International Women’s Day has its roots in social justice, pacifism, anti-imperialism and resistance to oppression. The date 8 March was formally adopted at the Second International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen in 1910 as a day when women of the…
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Science is for Girls: A Pioneering Computer Programmer to Inspire the Next Generation of Women in Science
This piece first appeared in the “Women’s Lives” series in the Donegal Democrat, 8 Feb. 2018. The International Day of Women and Girls in Science is on 11 February. The day was established by the UN General Assembly in 2015, with the aim of achieving gender equality in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). This…
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John Lee’s Walking Tour of Ireland, 1806–07
On 31 July 1806, John Fiott, later known as John Lee, left London to embark on a seven-month walking tour of Ireland, England and Wales. I wrote about his life, and about his walking tour of England in Wales in earlier posts. This post will look at the six months he spent walking around the southern half…
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Agnes Mary Clerke, an Irish Astronomer in Italy and London
Agnes Mary Clerke had no formal education and, despite the gender bar of the male-dominated professional scientific world, she became one of the most important astronomers and science writers of the Victorian period, and has a moon crater named in her honour. Hear me speak about Agnes as part of the Illuminate Herstory festival at…
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Peter Fidler: the fur-trader who trekked 48,000 miles
Peter Fidler was one of Canada’s greatest exploratory surveyors and his work formed the basis for the mapping of Western Canada. He produced two large-scale shoreline sketch maps, eight smaller-scale maps, and 373 segmental sketch maps, representing 7,300 miles of track and river. While travelling an estimated 48,000 miles by foot and canoe, he assisted in the establishment…
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John Lee: Traveller, Egyptologist, Astronomer
John Lee is not well remembered today, but in his lifetime he was known across Britain and Ireland, South Africa, North America, and north Africa. Lee’s home, Hartwell, was celebrated for its observatory and for his private collection of ancient artefacts. How did a merchant’s son rise to such celebrity in scientific and antiquarian circles?…