New book profiles life and work of two exceptional Galwegian academics
The academic, code breaker, musicologist and translator Emily Anderson is one of a duo of Galwegians to feature in Irish STEM Lives, a new publication from the Dictionary of Irish Biography looking at the diversity of STEM in Ireland.
The cryptanalyst and musicologist, who was from Taylor’s Hill and lived from 1891 to 1962, worked in UK intelligence service decoding diplomatic codes during WWI and WWII, later published translations of Mozart’s and Beethoven’s letters.
And she features in this Royal Irish Academy publication, edited by Turlough O'Riordan and Jane Grimson, which retraces the extraordinary work and contributions of natural philosophers, mathematicians, engineers, particle physicists, code breakers and many more, through a selection of forty-six exceptional pioneers.
This book will take the reader on a journey across artificial intelligence, climate change, food safety, transport and communication, touching all the fields of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) that are integral to modern society.
Emily Anderson was educated by a Swiss governess fluent in French and German, and learning the piano, and she graduated from QCG in 1908 with a BA in French and German.
After postgraduate work in Europe, she briefly taught in the Bahamas and then Galway before joining the UK intelligence service in 1918.
Working with the British army’s cryptanalytic bureau, utilising her cultural knowledge and linguistic and mathematical skills, Anderson decoded foreign diplomatic cable traffic, cracking the code used in Italian diplomatic communications.
She also had a public career as a translator and musicologist – publishing The Letters of Mozart and his Family (1938) and a three-volume Letters of Beethoven (1961).
During the Second World War, stationed in Egypt, Anderson cracked a series of Italian ciphers, ensuing British military successes in Libya and Ethiopia.
Her prowess emanated from her ability to translate and decrypt simultaneously, and she excelled as diplomatic signal intelligence deciphering became increasingly important during the cold war.
Also included in the book is Sheila Christina Tinney from Galway City, who, after a stellar career at UCG, went on to work at UCD and the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies.
She engaged with leading theoretical physicists around the world – including during a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey – and contributed to the development of mathematical physics at UCD. In 1949 Tinney was amongst the first four women elected to membership of the Royal Irish Academy.
Irish STEM Lives is available in bookshops and through the RIA Publishing House via www.ria.ie.
Pictured: Editors of Irish STEM Lives, Turlough O’Riordan and Jane Grimson, MRIA.