Blackrock Diving Tower in Salthill, Galway. Image: © mark_gusev/Stock.adobe.com
Storm Kathleen is heading towards Ireland tomorrow, likely causing disruption across the country. We take a look at the two eponymous Irish scientists who were responsible for disrupting their own respective fields.
People travelling around Ireland over the weekend can expect to be met by “unseasonably strong and gusty winds” as weather forecasters warn of Storm Kathleen making its way to the island’s southern and western areas.
According to Met Éireann, Storm Kathleen is expected to make first contact with Ireland tomorrow morning (6 April). Liz Coleman, deputy head of forecasting at the weather agency, said that this may come as a surprise to many who will be travelling as the Easter holiday season comes to an end.
“Please make sure to plan your journeys in advance by keeping in contact with the forecast. We are likely to see some trees down due to the saturated soils and strong winds,” Coleman said. “There will be dangerous conditions at sea too, coupled with wave overtopping and coastal flooding in some areas.”
Storm Kathleen is the 11th storm of the 2023/2024 season, starting with Storm Agnes – which was named after Agnes Mary Clerke, the Cork native who popularised astronomy with her science writing. Then there was Storm Babet, reportedly named after a woman who put her own name forward “because I was born during a storm”, which tore through Co Cork last October causing significant damage and flooding.
So, who does Storm Kathleen pay homage to? Met Éireann says it is named after Kathleen ‘Kay’ Antonelli (née McNulty) and Kathleen Lonsdale (née Yardley), two eminent scientists from the island of Ireland who have made significant contributions in their respective fields.
‘Mother of computer programming’
McNulty, widely regarded as the Irish ‘mother of computer programming’, was one of the six original programmers on ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), the first general-purpose digital computer built in 1945.
Born near Creeslough in Co Donegal in 1921, McNulty left Ireland for Pennsylvania with her family as a child. Showing precocious talent in mathematics, she was hired by the US army as a ‘computer’ to calculate missile trajectories – and soon found herself developing the processor for ENIAC.
McNulty worked on ENIAC until 1948, when she married John Mauchly, one of the brains behind the computer. Despite becoming a full-time housewife and raising seven children, she continued to work with Mauchly on computer programme designs and techniques.
In the years after Mauchly’s death, McNulty argued publicly for recognition of her husband and J Presper Eckert as co-inventors of the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. In 1997, she was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame and her oral history was recorded in 1998 as part of a documentary about the ENIAC programmers titled The Computers.
In 2017, Dublin City University named its computer science building in McNulty’s honour. Two years later, the Irish Centre for High-End Computing also paid tribute to her by naming its new supercomputer Kay following a public vote.
A scientist for peace
Meanwhile, Lonsdale was an Irish crystallographer who demonstrated the crystal structure of benzene. Born in Newbridge, Co Kildare in 1903 as Kathleen Yardley, she moved to England as a child where she was raised.
After studying at a boys’ school because the girls’ school did not offer science and mathematics as subjects, she graduated with a BSc from Bedford College for Women, where she achieved the highest marks in 10 years, and completed an MSc in physics at University College London.
The Nobel physicist Prof William Bragg, one of her examiners and a pioneer of X-ray diffraction, invited her to join his research group at University College London, where she was awarded a science doctorate. Today, she is remembered as the first to use Fourier spectral methods while solving the structure of hexachlorobenzene in 1931.
Of the many notable events from her life, one is when she was imprisoned during the Second World War because she refused to register for civil defence duties and pay a fine for refusing to register as it did not align with her pacifist stance. She and her husband became Quakers in the 1930s.
She was active in movements to promote peace, including the Pugwash Movement, the Atomic Scientists’ Association (of which she was a vice-president), and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (president). She also helped start the Young Scientist’s section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
She and biochemist Marjory Stephenson were the first two women to be inducted as Fellows of the Royal Society. In 1956, she was given the title Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Maynooth University instituted a Lonsdale scholarship to mark her connection with Kildare, and a commemorative plaque was erected at the former Yardley family home in Newbridge in 2003.
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