Illustrator Laura Finnegan –

a sampler

by

Laura Katharine Finnegan

2019

A S T R O P H Y S I C I S T

Joceyln was born in Belfast and went to Glasgow to study Physics. She was the only girl in the class and has now become a heroine for women in science. Joceyln did her PhD research in the University of Cambridge, where she helped to build a giant radio telescope to help her measure quasars.1 Quasars are very bright, very far away celestial objects. 2 When looking at the charts she made using her telescope, Joceyln spotted something not quite right, an unusual pattern unlike the normal ones she saw. She found more of these unusual patterns, which we now know to be pulsars. When big stars die, their outer coats explode to make a supernova, while the inside part condenses down to make a pulsar.3 Pulsars rotate very quickly, emitting a beam of electromagnetic radiation like a lighthouse emits light. You can only see this light when it’s pointed at you, so they appear to be pulsating even though the light is always being emitted.

Joceyln’s discovery of this new type of star was so wonderful that it received a Nobel Prize. However, Jocelyn wasn’t given the prize, her male PhD supervisor was. Oftentimes, people do not take female scientists seriously. Sadly, this happened a lot with Jocelyn but she is determined and has never let this hold her back. She is a role model for many girls around the world who want to conquer the science world.

P R O F E S S O R O F G E N E T I C S

Jane studied Genetics in Trinity College Dublin and stayed on to do her PhD in the same department. When she started her research, a man named Michael Griffith came to the department looking for scientists who would be interested in studying a genetic disease called retinitis pigmentosa. Retinitis pigmentosa is a disease in which the cells at the back of the eye, the retina, die over time, leading to blindness. Michael’s dad had been diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa and Michael had set up a charity called Fighting Blindness to help his dad and other patients find support. Michael had spoken to scientists at a conference about genetic causes of the disease and came to speak to David McConnell in the Genetics Department in Trinity College seeking help for his family.1

Jane and some other researchers, Pete Humphries and Paul Kenna, took on the challenge of finding the gene that wasn’t working properly and was causing the disease in Michael’s family. Jane travelled all around Ireland visiting families of people with retinitis pigmentosa. She studied the inheritance of the disease and took DNA samples to help her find the gene.

Today, Jane’s lab continues to find genetic causes of eye disease. Jane also has a team of researchers involved in finding gene therapies for genetic diseases. Where there is a defective gene contributing to a disease, gene therapy aims to use a virus as a trojan horse to bring in a working version of the gene, much like a teacher might give you a handout if your little brother ripped a page from your textbook.

Jane’s love of genetics has encouraged many students in Trinity College to study it, and her passion helps encourage her lab along the path to finding cures for these devastating conditions. S C I E N T I S T, S C I E N C E W R I T E R A N D B R O A D C A S T E R

Mary went to Trinity College Dublin to study Genetics and stayed in college to study Statistics. After she graduated, Mary did research with the agricultural group Teagasc and then did another course—journalism! Then she decided to dedicate her time to communicating science.

Mary founded a group called “Women in Technology and Science”, which brings lots of women together from all different science backgrounds: engineers, mathematicians, scientists all meet and fight for women in these jobs that were historically done by men.1

Mary wrote about science a lot, but not just for scientists. She often wrote about science and scientists in the Irish Times and spoke about science on the radio. Eventually, Mary wrote a book, Ingenious Ireland, which was all about the rich heritage of Ireland: our science, industry, and archaeology are marvellous gems and Mary celebrated them in this book. She also gave tours of Dublin and produced audio guides and maps to let people discover the science stories of Dublin for themselves, from the dissection of a poor elephant on Essex Street2 to Bishop James Ussher’s calculation that the world was born on October 22nd, 4004 BC.3

Mary didn’t just love science, she helped encourage other people to love science too.

A S T R O N O M E R A N D M A T H E M A T I C I AN

Annie went to school in Belfast in the 1870s. She won a scholarship to Cambridge, where she studied Maths. Even though she came top of her class, she wasn’t given a degree because she was a girl. After Cambridge, Annie went to work in Greenwich observatory, where they had just started to hire women. She began to study the sun, sunspots and magnetic storms. Four years later, she married the head of the Photographic and Spectroscopic Department, Edward Walter Maunder, and had to quit her job: married women were not allowed to work in the public service. Annie did not give up. She travelled around to world on expeditions with Edward and worked alongside him. When they were in India, Annie took a photograph of huge rays bursting from the sun. This was the longest coronal streamer ever recorded.1

Though Annie had been forced to leave her job, she kept following her passion. She was even considered an expert in eclipse photography and received various grants to fund her expeditions with her husband. Annie published her work in journals but had to use her husband’s name until she was made a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. She had tried to join before but wasn’t allowed because she was a woman.2

During the first World War, Annie went back to the Observatory she was dismissed from and worked as a volunteer, filling in for the men who had left to fight the war. Edward died soon after the war, but Annie lived for 20 more years. The Maunder crater on the moon is named after both of them. Despite the hurdles she faced, Annie shot for the stars, side-stepping the rules restricting women scientists and finding her own way to follow her dreams.

N O B E L P R I Z E – W I N N I N G P H Y S I C I S T

Ernest was born in Dungarvan in Co. Waterford. He studied Science and Maths in Trinity College Dublin and then moved to Cambridge to work with Ernest Rutherford.

When he was in Cambridge, he worked with John Cockcroft to make an accelerator to speed up protons to very high velocities. They aimed to use these accelerated these protons to bombard some lithium, causing the nuclei of the lithium atoms to split and produce two alpha particles.1 The laboratory was full of high voltage equipment and was dangerous to walk around when the experiment was underway, so Ernest had to crawl along the floor to take a peek at the results. He saw some small sparkles of light, little lithium atoms being split into alpha particles.2 He had split the atom.

In 1951, Ernest and Cockcroft won the Nobel Prize for their work on splitting the atom. Particle accelerators like Ernest’s are still important in physics today: the large hadron collider at CERN is a similar, but bigger, machine.

Ernest loved teaching and inspired many students to take on the challenge of science. The Walton Club in Trinity College Dublin is a science, technology, engineering and maths club that aims to ignite curiosity in secondary students, encouraging them to follow in Ernest’s path and accept the challenge of science.3

References Annie Russell Maunder Joceyln Bell Burnell 1. Mulvihill, M. (2015). Annie Russell: A trailblazing Irish astronomer whose work eclipsed 1. Pearse, Y. (n.d.). Meet Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the astrophysicist who first noticed pulsars. Retrieved her husband’s. Retrieved March 31, 2019, from March 31, 2019, from https://massivesci.com/articles/jocelyn-bell-burnell-pulsars-science- https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/annie-russell-a-trailblazing-irish- heroes/ astronomer-whose-work-eclipsed-her-husband-s-1.2162907 2. May, S. (2015). Quasar. Retrieved March 31, 2019, from 2. Annie Russell Maunder | Explore Royal Museums Greenwich. (n.d.). Retrieved March https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/dictionary/Quasar.html 31, 2019, from https://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/annie-russell-maunder 3. Pulsar Discoverer Jocelyn Bell Burnell Talks About Her Amazing Find: Watch Live Thursday | 3. Annie Maunder biography. (n.d.). Retrieved March 31, 2019, from Space. (n.d.). Retrieved March 31, 2019, from https://www.space.com/42219-jocelyn-bell- http://www.mcs.st- burnell-lecture-webcast.html and.ac.uk/~ras/Summer2018/MaunderAnnie/AnnieMaunder.html

Jane Farrar Ernest Walton 1. Ideas, Where Do They Come From: Aoife McLysaght at TEDxDUBLIN - YouTube. (2012). 1. Ernest T.S. Walton - Facts - NobelPrize.org. (n.d.). Retrieved March 31, 2019, from Retrieved March 31, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO3pIMjKYck https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1951/walton/facts/ Pedigree adapted from: 2. Ernest Walton Nobel Laureate. (n.d.). Retrieved March 31, 2019, from https://www.rte.ie/archives/2017/0911/903812-ernest-walton-nobel-laureate/ Fingert, J. H., Oh, K., Chung, M., Scheetz, T. E., Andorf, J. L., Johnson, R. M., … Stone, E. M. 3. Trinity Walton Club. (n.d.). Retrieved March 31, 2019, from (2008). Association of a Novel Mutation in the Retinol Dehydrogenase 12 (RDH12) Gene With https://www.tcd.ie/waltonclub/ Autosomal Dominant Retinitis Pigmentosa. Archives of Ophthalmology, 126(9), 1301. http://doi.org/10.1001/archopht.126.9.1301 Mary Mulvihill 1. Mary Mulvihill – Mary Mulvihill Award. (n.d.). Retrieved March 31, 2019, from https://marymulvihillaward.ie/mary-mulvihill/ 2. Mulvihill, M. (2003). Taking on a mammoth task. Retrieved March 31, 2019, from https://www.irishtimes.com/news/taking-on-a-mammoth-task-1.356047 3. Mulvihill, M. (2003). How an archbishop calculated the Creation. Retrieved March 31, 2019, from https://www.irishtimes.com/news/how-an-archbishop-calculated-the-creation-1.378556

Upcoming profiles in the “For the Love of Science!” series:

John Joly

Professor of Geology, physicist, inventor of radiotherapy

Bill Campbell

Nobel prize-winning zoologist and parasitologist

Dan Bradley Professor of Genetics, studying ancient DNA and the history of humankind

Aoife McLysaght Professor of Genetics and advocate for women in science, studying the evolution of genes A B O U T T H E A U T H O R

Robert Boyle Laura Katharine Finnegan is a PhD student in the Smurfit The Father of Modern Chemistry Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin. She is studying Luke O’Neill gene therapy for retinal degenerations but enjoys Professor of Biochemistry and science communicator

illustrating in her spare time. She Mary Ward teaches genetics to secondary school students as part of the

astronomer, microscopist, artist AccessEd programme, and loves talking to young people about Kathleen Lonsdale science

Key figure in the development of crystallography Laura is a Scholar of Trinity College Dublin and an Irish Francis Beaufort Research Council Postgraduate admiral and hydrographer for the Royal Navy, developed the Beaufort scale Scholar.

and more!