Although it has rarely attracted the attention of the Irish public, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) has been viewed internationally as a centre of excellence in the physical sciences and Celtic studies since it began life 85 years ago.
In 1940, with the forces of Nazi Germany rampaging across Europe, Éamon de Valera calmly decided to set up a research institute based on his vision of having something that would put Ireland on the global map of science and Celtic studies scholarship, separated from associations with its colonial past.
The model was the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study in the US, a research-only organisation founded in 1930 and home to scientific greats such as Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer and John von Neumann.
In the beginning, the Dublin institute needed a great of its own, to cement its credibility. Opportunity knocked for de Valera following the Nazi Anschluss of Austria in 1938, when one of the founders of spellbinding new physics of “quantum mechanics”, Erwin Schrödinger – an opponent of Nazism – was forced to flee.
RM Block
A personal invitation went out from de Valera to Schrödinger to come and live in Ireland and take up the post of director of the DIAS school of theoretical physics. Schrödinger – the winner, with Paul Dirac, of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1933 for his work on quantum mechanics – accepted and remained in Ireland, at Kincora Road in Clontarf, until he retired in 1955.
“[Schrödinger] was key in terms of getting the institute on its feet and out of the block,” says Dr Eucharia Meehan, the current registrar and chief executive. “He was the star guy, and achieved what de Valera wanted – that kind of ‘wow’ moment.”
During wartime Schrödinger lost some contact with the outside physics world, as the scientific journals were not making it into Ireland as normal. Cut off from his usual publications, Schrödinger shifted his attention to biology.
In “What is Life?”, a series of famous lectures at Trinity College Dublin, he fired the starting gun for DNA-based genetics, by challenging young scientists to discover what carried the code for life. This inspired young scientists, notably James Watson and Francis Crick, to dedicate themselves to answering this question.
Following their discovery of the DNA double helix in 1953, Crick and Watson wrote a letter to Schrödinger addressed to his home in which they acknowledged the impact his 1944 book, What Is Life? – an amalgam of his TCD lectures on the subject – had made on their work.
There were others at the institute who made significant contributions, including Walter Heitler, who in 1945 succeeded Schrödinger as director of the school of theoretical physics. Cornelius Lanczos worked on the theory of relativity. John Lewis cofounded Corvil, a company that provided institutions with transparency on electronic financial trading.
Yet, despite the fact the institute was a pet de Valera project, and its leader a scientific galactico with a colourful if ethically questionable private life – frequenting prostitutes and living with his wife and another woman – it didn’t grab the imagination of the public and its work went mostly under the radar.
[ How Erwin Schrödinger indulged his ‘Lolita complex’ in IrelandOpens in new window ]
“I always viewed DIAS as an organisation whose impact and value wasn’t really fully appreciated,” says Meehan. “It had a huge global reputation, but ironically in the Irish context, and even within Irish Government circles, it had an incredibly low profile.”
Unlike Ireland’s universities, DIAS is not a degree-awarding body, and does not have an undergraduate or postgraduate teaching function. “We host PhD students who wish to do research in the areas that we are experts in, or to work with our academic staff,” she says. “Those students are registered elsewhere in the Irish system, or indeed internationally.”
The focus at DIAS is on research, albeit with a mission to train the next generation of scholars. The institute hosts more than 100 research and technical specialists, including about 25 PhD students and 65 postdoctoral researchers.
The institute’s reputation internationally is reflected in its continuing ability to attract top talent from overseas, with some 70 per cent of the technical experts it employs coming from outside Ireland.
DIAS has also been successful in securing competitive research funding – leveraging its €6.5 million operational budget to bring in an additional €3 million per year in grants.
There are 10 senior professors and a handful of junior staff, but despite this modest size, the institute has hugely impacted Irish research. “We are the largest astrophysics research group in Ireland, if you count researchers,” says Meehan. “We are involved in six satellite missions at the moment – directly.”
The research-focused model is rare and valuable, she says. “People often say to me: what does fundamental research actually mean? Regardless of what area you are in – you’re trying to solve a problem, to understand something. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, and along the way you are populating the jigsaw, and you have flashes and discoveries as the picture begins to emerge.”
The work of DIAS’s researchers spans a universe of learning – with its four divisions made up of cosmic physics (which includes astronomy and astrophysics), geophysics, theoretical physics and Celtic studies.
“Through our astrophysics and astronomy division, we’re studying the Universe, star formation, our solar system,” says Meehan. “Through our geophysics division we’re studying the planet. For example, we run the Irish National Seismic Network.”
There have been important recent DIAS contributions to the pioneering James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), where Prof Tom Ray is co-principal investigator of its mid-infrared instrument, and the work by Prof Chris Bean on earthquake prediction for hazard mitigation.
It has also developed software that is helping improve predictions of earthquakes,” says Meehan. “We’re very delighted that it will have a practical use, but we developed it as part of the process of fundamental research.”
Meanwhile, in Celtic studies, the institute is the acknowledged global leader, with research efforts focused on Irish identity, heritage and culture.
Its flagship Irish Script on Screen initiative is aiming to digitise thousands of Irish manuscripts scattered across the globe. “What we are trying to do is – virtually – bring all those manuscripts back home.”
The “Embedded Globally, Strengthened Locally” strategy is coming to an end and a new one being worked on. “A key thing for the new strategy is that we’re not the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, we’re Ireland’s institute for advanced studies,” says Meehan.
There are ambitions to expand into areas such as oceanography and atmospheric sciences, and to deepen collaborations with Irish universities, yet the availability of resources to realise this vision is a concern.
“We need support ... What I mean by that is nonmonetary support, from our Minister [for Science], our department to move into those areas. Ultimately, resources will become an issue, but I’m not focusing on resources as the first off. The key thing for me is the what – the why.”
Head of astronomy and astrophysics Prof Peter Gallagher outlines how space is important to the institute’s future:
“In recent years, DIAS have been involved in numerous Nasa and ESA space missions, such as JWST, Solar Orbiter and the Juice space mission. JWST is now finding new planets and helping us to explore the atmospheres of planets that may be similar to the Earth, while Solar Orbiter is orbiting close to the sun, making detailed maps of the sun’s surface and atmosphere. Juice, launched in 2023, will arrive at Jupiter in 2031 to explore the icy moons of Jupiter – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – with unprecedented detail.”
“DIAS are also a leading member of the Low Frequency Array (Lofar), which is the largest low frequency radio telescope in the world, stretching from Birr Castle, Co Offaly, to eastern Poland,” he says. “This radio telescope will be upgraded in 2025 to study flaring stars, rapidly rotating pulsars and magnetic fields throughout the universe. Lofar is a stepping stone to the next great radio observatory, the Square Kilometre Array, which is currently being built in South Africa and Australia, with DIAS students and scientists playing an important roles in its development and planning for its future use.”
The institute is unique in Ireland, but internationally it is part of a growing family of internationally recognised institutes for advanced studies with counterparts in New Jersey, Paris, Vienna, Sweden and the German Max Planck network.
For Ireland, says Meehan, the value of DIAS lies not just in its impressive research output but as a beacon for talent and a bridge to the global scientific community. “Our critical mass is generated by the fact that we’re part of global science, where we lead on some things and we partner in others.”
As the centenary of DIAS comes into view, Dr Meehan says the institute wants to be a catalyst that helps propel Ireland forward. “We’re ambitious. We want to do more. We can do more.”
