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DCU names buildings in honour of Irish female science heroes

Dublin City University has today announced the naming of a number of its key buildings in honour of Irish female trailblazers in the fields of computing, crystallography and astronomy.  The namings co-incide with InspireFest, the international festival which showcases science, technology, design and the arts with a special focus on diversity and inclusion.

The Computing Building has been renamed the McNulty Building in honour of Kathleen Rita McNulty (1921-2006), the Creeslough, Donegal-born computer programmer who was one of the first programmers of ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), the first all-electronic digital computer unveiled to the world in 1946.

Dame Kathleen Lonsdale (1903-71), a crystallographer born in Newbridge, County Kildare, who was at the vanguard of establishing crystallography science and proved the flatness of the benzene ring by X-ray diffraction methods, an important milestone in organic chemistry, has the Lonsdale Building named in her honour.

The Postgraduate block on the Glasnevin Campus has been named after Mary Brück (1925-2008), born Máire Teresa Conway in Ballivor, Co Meath, the astronomer and astrophysicist, who conducted widely-published research into stars, the interstellar medium and the Magellanic Clouds, using the numbers, brightnesses and colours of their stars to study the structure and evolution of nearby galaxies.

Professor Brian MacCraith, President of DCU explained,

‘Ireland has made many great contributions to the fields of science and technology through these renowned figures that we honour today.  It is important that we celebrate and look to this rich seam of scientific achievement to inspire current and future DCU students, particularly young women, to emulate the achievements of their predecessors, keeping the STEM tradition alive well into the future.”

Today’s namings are the first phase in a series of building namings.  Other buildings will be named shortly in honour of Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Sir George Gabriel Stokes and Marconi.