The
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (
DIAS)
DublinDublin is the largest city and capital of Ireland. It is officially known in Irish as Baile Átha Cliath or Áth Cliath ; the English name comes from the Irish Dubh Linn meaning "black pool". It is located near the midpoint of Ireland's east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey and at the...
,
IrelandIreland is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain...
was established in 1940 by the
TaoiseachThe Taoiseach , plural Taoisigh , also referred to as An Taoiseach , is the head of government of Ireland.The Taoiseach is appointed by the President upon the nomination of Dáil Éireann , and must, while he remains in office, retain the support of a majority in the Dáil...
(Prime Minister) of the time,
Éamon de ValeraÉamon de Valera was one of the dominant political figures in 20th century Ireland...
under the
Institute For Advanced Studies Act, 1940. The Institute consists of 3 schools. The
School of Theoretical Physics, the
School of Cosmic Physics and the
School of Celtic studies. The directors of these schools are currently Professor Werner Nahm, Professor Luke Drury and Professor Fergus Kelly. The Institute under the act is empowered to "train students in methods of advanced research" but does not itself award degrees; graduate students working under the supervision of Institute researchers can, with the agreement of the governing board of the appropriate school, be registered for a higher degree in any university worldwide.
History
The Institute was initially located at 64&65
Merrion SquareMerrion Square is situated on the south side of Dublin city centre and is considered one of the city's finest Georgian squares. The square was laid out after 1762 and was largely complete by the beginning of the 19th century....
and had two schools - the School of
Theoretical PhysicsTheoretical physics is a branch of physics which employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics in an attempt to explain natural phenomena. Its central core is mathematical physics,[Sometimes mathematical physics and theoretical physics are used synonymously to refer to the...]
and the School of
CelticModern Celts are those peoples who are speakers of Celtic languages, or who consider themselves, or have been considered by others, to participate in a Celtic culture deriving from communities that have formerly been Celtic-speaking....
Studies - to which the School of Cosmic Physics was added in 1947. Currently the Institute has its schools located at three premises on the
SouthsideThe Southside is not an official administrative area but a colloquial term referring to the area of County Dublin south of the river Liffey...
of Dublin at 10 Burlington Road, 31 Fitzwilliam Place and 5 Merrion Square. It also maintains a presence at
Dunsink ObservatoryThe Dunsink Observatory is an astronomical observatory established in approximately 1785 near the city of Dublin, Ireland.Its most famous director was William Rowan Hamilton, who, amongst other things, discovered quaternions, the first non-commutative algebra, while strolling from the observatory...
in north
County DublinCounty Dublin , or more correctly today the Dublin Region , is the area that contains the city of Dublin, the capital of Ireland as well as the largest city on the island of Ireland; and the modern counties of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal and South Dublin. The Dublin Regional Authority is the...
.
Shortly after becoming
TaoiseachThe Taoiseach , plural Taoisigh , also referred to as An Taoiseach , is the head of government of Ireland.The Taoiseach is appointed by the President upon the nomination of Dáil Éireann , and must, while he remains in office, retain the support of a majority in the Dáil...
,
Éamon de ValeraÉamon de Valera was one of the dominant political figures in 20th century Ireland...
investigated the possibility of setting up an institute of higher learning. Being of mathematical background, de Valera was aware of the decline of the
Dunsink ObservatoryThe Dunsink Observatory is an astronomical observatory established in approximately 1785 near the city of Dublin, Ireland.Its most famous director was William Rowan Hamilton, who, amongst other things, discovered quaternions, the first non-commutative algebra, while strolling from the observatory...
, where Sir William Rowan Hamilton (regarded as Ireland’s most influential mathematician) had held the position of Royal Astronomer of Ireland. Following meetings with prominent academics in the fields of mathematics and
astronomyAstronomy is the scientific study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the Earth's atmosphere...
, he came to the conclusion that astronomy at Dunsink should be revived and an institute for higher learning should be established.
As to the apparently odd pairing of the subjects to be covered - Theoretical Physics and Celtic Studies, these probably appeared less odd at the time. The Institute is of course modeled on the
Institute for Advanced StudyThe Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is a center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. The Institute is perhaps best known as the academic home of Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, and Kurt Gödel, after their immigration to the United...
in
Princeton, New JerseyPrinceton, New Jersey is located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. Princeton University has been sited in the town since 1756. Although Princeton is a "college town", there are other important institutions in the area, including the Institute for Advanced Study, Educational Testing...
, which was founded in 1930, and Theoretical Physics was still
the research subject in 1940. Most importantly,
Erwin SchrödingerErwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger was an Austrian theoretical physicist who achieved fame for his contributions to quantum mechanics, especially the Schrödinger equation, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1933...
was interested in coming to Ireland, and this represented an opportunity not to be missed. The School of Celtic Studies owes its founding to the great importance de Valera accorded to the
Irish languageIrish is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now only spoken natively by a small minority of the Irish population but also plays an important symbolic role in the life of the Irish state, and is used...
. He considered it a vital element in the makeup of the nation, and therefore important that the nation should have a place of higher learning devoted to this subject.
The founding of the Institute was somewhat controversial, since at the time only a minority were successfully completing elementary education, and university education was for the privileged. By this reasoning, the creation of a high-level research institute was a waste of scarce resources. However,
Éamon de ValeraÉamon de Valera was one of the dominant political figures in 20th century Ireland...
was aware of the great symbolic importance such a body would have on the international stage for Ireland. This thinking influenced much of de Valera's premiership
(see history of the Republic of IrelandIreland first became an independent state on 6 December 1922. On that day it became a dominion in the British Commonwealth called the Irish Free State. Its independence followed a revolutionary period which began with a rebellion in 1916, the unilateral establishment of a separatist regime in 1919,...
). In the nearly 70 years of the Institute's existence it has more than fulfilled de Valera's expectations and, in addition to promoting Ireland's reputation for scholarship and science, has made a number of real contributions to the nation. Most dramatically perhaps, work by the Geophysics section of the School of Cosmic Physics on the formation of the North Atlantic demonstrated that the Irish continental shelf extended much further than previously thought, thereby more than doubling the area of the seabed over which Ireland can claim economic exploitation rights under the international law of the sea. Fundamental work in statistical mechanics by the School of Theoretical Physics has found application in computer switching technology and led to the establishment of an Irish campus company to exploit this intellectual property. The Institute has also in recent years been one of the main agents helping to set up a modern e-Infrastructure in support of all Irish research.
In 1968 the
Royal Society of London recognised de Valera's contribution to science in establishing the Institute by electing him to
honorary fellowship.
History
The School of
theoretical PhysicsTheoretical physics is a branch of physics which employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics in an attempt to explain natural phenomena. Its central core is mathematical physics,[Sometimes mathematical physics and theoretical physics are used synonymously to refer to the...]
initially consisted of just one member, Professor
Erwin SchrödingerErwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger was an Austrian theoretical physicist who achieved fame for his contributions to quantum mechanics, especially the Schrödinger equation, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1933...
, who moved into 65 Merrion Square in February 1941. Schrödinger began his duties as Director of the school by giving two courses on
quantum theoryQuantum mechanics is a set of principles describing the physical reality at the atomic level of matter and the subatomic . These descriptions include the simultaneous wave-like and particle-like behavior of both matter and radiation...
. Up to this time there had not been courses of this level available in Ireland. The lecture series were at two levels, the lower level including introductory wave mechanics,
perturbation theoryPerturbation theory comprises mathematical methods that are used to find an approximate solution to a problem which cannot be solved exactly, by starting from the exact solution of a related problem...
of quantum mechanical systems, spin of the electron and Dirac's relativistic wave equation. The higher level provided an introduction to the research being performed at the school. In June 1941 Schrödinger was joined by
Walter HeitlerWalter Heinrich Heitler was a German physicist who made contributions to quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory...
who took the position of assistant professor. Heitler gave a course of lectures designed to introduce students to quantum theory of the
chemical bondA chemical bond is an interaction between atoms or molecules and allows the formation of polyatomic chemical compounds. A chemical bond is the attraction caused by the electromagnetic force between opposing charges, either between electrons and nuclei, or as the result of a dipole attraction...
. These lectures brought together staff and students of third-level establishments in the Dublin area, exposing them to twentieth century theoretical physics. Members of the mathematical community at the time seized the opportunity to hear the lectures of Schrödinger and Heitler and within a few years the material covered began to find its way onto undergraduate university courses.
One of the objectives De Valera had in mind when he founded the institute was to provide a meeting place for scholars from University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin. For reasons both historical and religious, the academic contacts between the two institutions had previously been non-existent. It has been suggested that the creation of DIAS was an extrordinary act of personal vanity by De Valera who was an amateur mathematician of some considerable talent. The conjoining of the two institutions, which was formally proposed by Donogh O'Malley in the abortive Universities Mergers Act (1967) was strongly opposed by both Universities and ultimately defeated.
Research
In its early years the research of the school mainly focused on non-linear field theory, Meson theory,
general relativityGeneral relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916. It is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. It unifies special relativity and Newton's law of universal gravitation, and describes gravity as a...
and
geometryGeometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers....
. Non-linear field theory being an attempt to combine the electromagnetic field and the gravitational field. Mesons which Heitler began researching when he arrived in 1941 were at the time believed to be the fundamental particles of the
strong interactionIn particle physics, the strong interaction holds quarks and gluons together to form protons, neutrons and other particles. The strong interaction is one of the four fundamental interactions, along with gravitation, the electromagnetic force and the weak interaction...
. In 1948
John Lighton SyngeJohn Lighton Synge was an Irish mathematician and physicist.-Background:Synge was born 1897 in Dublin, Ireland, in a Protestant family and educated at St. Andrew's College, Dublin. He entered Trinity College, Dublin in 1915...
was appointed senior professor, whose research interests were
general relativityGeneral relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916. It is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. It unifies special relativity and Newton's law of universal gravitation, and describes gravity as a...
and geometry. Later research involved
numerical analysisNumerical analysis is the study of algorithms for the problems of continuous mathematics .One of the earliest mathematical writings is the Babylonian tablet YBC 7289, which gives a sexagesimal numerical approximation of , the length of the diagonal in a unit square.Being able to compute the sides...
due to the addition of
Cornelius LanczosCornelius Lanczos , born Löwy Kornél , was a Hungarian mathematician and physicist.Lanczos' Ph.D. thesis was on relativity theory. In 1924 he discovered an exact solution of the Einstein field equation which represents a cylindrically symmetric rigidly rotating configuration of dust particles...
to the faculty and also the development of the computer.
The school has three senior professors at present: Werner Nahm, Tony Dorlas and Denjoe O'Connor. Nahm has worked on massive integrable field theories in the conformal limit and recently also on aspects of the quantum Hall effect in graphene. Dorlas has worked on a lattice model of a boson gas called the Bose-Hubbard model, on models of a spin glass and on Anderson localisation in quasi-one-dimensional systems, and also on quantum information theory. O' Connor has worked on noncommutative geometry and applications to quantum field theory, esp. as an alternative to lattice field theory, and on crossover phenomena and the renormalisation group.
Future
In July 2009 the report of the
Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure ProgrammesThe Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programmes was an advisory committee, headed by the economist Colm McCarthy, established by the Irish Government in 2008 to recommend cuts in public spending. It issued its findings, commonly known as the McCarthy report, on 16 July...
(also known as the McCarthy report) suggested, as part of a long list of proposals, that the Institute be amalgamated into either
UCD-Education:*University of California, Davis*University College Dublin**The association football club University College Dublin A.F.C.**The rugby union club University College Dublin RFC*University of Colorado at Denver-Science:*User-centered design...
or
TCDTCD can be used as:*Chad, ISO 3-letter country code*Teller cash dispenser*Tentative Channel Designation*Thalamocortical Dysrhythmia*Thermal Conductivity Detector, a type of detector used in Gas Chromatography...
. This it is suggested would yield "efficiency savings" which however are not identified or quantified in the report.
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