Eugene Kennedy elected as a member of the Royal Irish Academy
22 March 2004

Eugene Kennedy

Professor Eugene Kennedy, Head of the School of Physical Sciences and former Director of the National Centre for Plasma Science and Technology in DCU, was honoured last week when he was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Dr Michael Ryan, President of the Royal Irish Academy, said ' Excellence is the only benchmark of the knowledge society. Those elected as Members of the Royal Irish Academy today have raised the benchmark of excellence in their respective fields internationally and bring honour on themselves and Ireland by their achievements'.

Professor Kennedy has a highly respected international profile in the field of Atomic and Plasma physics and is generally considered to be the most eminent experimental atomic physicist in Ireland. His work in DCU has concentrated on measurements using the dual laser plasma technique, which he pioneered. He has over eighty refereed papers in leading physics journals, including ten in the premier journal, Physical Review Letters. Before his work was initiated, knowledge of the important area of the photoionization of atomic ions was largely theoretical. Extensive measurements of ionic photoionization have since been made at DCU, using the dual laser plasma method, by Professor Kennedy and his colleagues Dr John Costello, Dr Jean-Paul Mosnier, Dr Paul van Kampen and their graduate students. In 1997 DCU established the laser plasma research group as one of its first University Designated Research Centres (UDRC).

Other Members of the Royal Irish Academy from DCU include: Professors Han Vos and Malcolm Smyth of the School of Chemical Sciences and President Emeritus, Dr Danny O'Hare.

The Royal Irish Academy is an all-Ireland, independent, academic body that promotes study and excellence in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. It is the principal learned society in Ireland and has approximately 320 Members elected in recognition of their academic achievement. For further information please see www.ria.ie.

Well-known Academy members include: Dr Garret FitzGerald; Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney; Mr Dermot Gleeson ; Mr Peter Sutherland; Professor Joe Lee; Professor Ronan Fanning; Mrs Mary Robinson, Professor David McConnell (TCD Geneticist), Professor Richard Kearney; and President Mary McAleese.

For 217 years the Royal Irish Academy has been honouring Ireland's foremost academics by electing them as Members of the Academy.