The greatest Irish person ever

by Mark Humphrys

Inspired by the absurd "Ireland's Greatest" list (Oct 2010), I thought I would list my own greatest Irish people in history.

It is hard to express how stupid the "Ireland's Greatest" list is. It includes pop stars, actors, sports stars and other celebrities of the moment. Stephen Gately (a pop star), Phil Lynott (a pop star) and Adi Roche (the head of a small charity) are in the top 10 greatest people in Irish history!

The list includes many parochial, radical nationalist and extremist people whose influence on Irish history has probably been negative. The top 5 includes two more irrelevant people (Mary Robinson and Bono), a dodgy gunman and communist (James Connolly), and another dodgy gunman (Michael Collins).

The list included no scientists. In fact, it included no people who made factual intellectual contributions at all - no scientists, no mathematicians, no astronomers, no explorers, no philosophers, no historians. Irish history consists of a lot of violent nationalists and B-list celebrities according to this list. What a dumb lot it makes us out to be, compared with the soaring intellectual contributions made by those on the British list.

This page is my attempt to say that the Irish are not as stupid as "Ireland's Greatest" makes us out to be. Ireland too was part of the Western Enlightenment.

Edmund Burke.

My List

Here's my list of the greatest Irish people ever. I've tried to pick people who thought or achieved something universal - something good and important for all of humanity, not just for Ireland.

Rank	Name	Field	Rank in "Ireland's Greatest"	Why on my list
No. 1 greatest Irish person ever.	Edmund Burke	Politics	Not on list	Warned that revolutions must lead to something better, not worse, than the old order they destroy. A point as relevant to Hamas and Al Qaeda as it was to communism in the 20th century. If only every revolutionary considered Burke's point, even for 5 minutes.
2.	Robert Boyle	Science	Not on list	The father of chemistry. One of the founders of experimental science. Also a pioneer of the idea that diseases may have natural causes.
3.	The Duke of Wellington	War, Politics	Not on list	Defeated Napoleon. Saved Britain's flawed democracy. Also passed Catholic Emancipation, a major step forward in British democracy.
4.	Daniel O'Connell	Politics	Top 40. Not in top 10.	His message was universal. All people, of all religions and all classes, have the right to be free and should have the right to vote and stand. Boring democracy, achieved peacefully, should be the goal of all humans. Violence should not be used against a democracy or flawed democracy.
5.	George Boole	Mathematics	Not on list	Boolean logic, fundamental to computer science.
6.	Samuel Beckett	Literature	Not on list	The most universal of Ireland's writers. His writing on the human condition without God will still be relevant in a thousand years.
7.	William Rowan Hamilton	Science	Not on list	Hamiltonian mechanics in physics. Quaternions in mathematics.
8.	William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin	Science	Not on list	Laws of thermodynamics in physics. The concept of absolute zero. The Kelvin unit of measurement is after him. Also helped develop transatlantic telegraph cable, the first major step in wiring the world.
9.	Archbishop James Ussher	Religion, History	Not on list	Despite how silly 4004 BC looks now, the concept of trying to date the events in the Bible was a breakthrough, and led to sceptical and empirical analysis of the Bible, and ultimately deism and atheism.
10.	Lord Castlereagh	War, Politics	Not on list	Held together the European coalition that defeated Napoleon. The new European order he helped establish prevented major European land wars from 1815 to 1914. Long-time supporter of Catholic Emancipation. (Though will never be forgiven in Ireland for Act of Union and suppression of 1798 rebellion.)
11.	Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener	War	Not on list	Defeated the Mahdist Islamist army of Sudan at the Battle of Omdurman. (I find the Boer War and the First World War far more morally ambiguous.)
12.	Brendan Bracken	War, Politics	Not on list	Winston Churchill's Minister of Information in WW2. Helped defeat Nazi Germany and Axis Japan.
13.	William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse	Astronomy	Not on list	Discovered many galaxies, including the first spiral galaxies. Discovered the spiral nature of the Whirlpool Galaxy and the Sunflower Galaxy and the Pinwheel Galaxy. Named the Crab Nebula.
14.	George Stokes	Science	Not on list	Navier–Stokes equations in fluid dynamics. Stokes' theorem in mathematical physics.
15.	John Bell	Science	Not on list	Bell's Theorem in quantum physics.
16.	Ernest Walton	Science	Not on list	Split the atom.
17.	George Johnstone Stoney	Science	Not on list	Named the electron.
18.	Jocelyn Bell Burnell	Astronomy	Not on list	Discovered pulsars.
19.	John Joly	Science	Not on list	Estimating the age of the earth.
20.	Sir John Bernard Burke	Genealogy	Not on list	Editor of Burke's Peerage and related works. Probably the most important genealogist ever.
21.	Samuel Madden	Science fiction	Not on list	Wrote one of the first science fiction works in 1733, imagining life in the 20th century.
22.	W.T. Cosgrave	Politics	Not on list	I disqualify the 1916-23 revolutionaries on the grounds that violence against a democracy is no model for the world. I disqualify most Irish nationalists because their issues are too parochial. But maybe W.T. Cosgrave has a more universal message for the world - that violent revolution can lead to boring parliamentary democracy. It doesn't have to lead to tyranny (though perhaps normally it does). W.T. Cosgrave is a model for the world of what to do after a revolution.
23.	Charles Stewart Parnell	Politics	Top 40. Not in top 10.	Same universal message as Daniel O'Connell. The end of the feudal land system, and the rights of the poor to progress too. A model of peaceful change within a flawed democracy. All people with grievances against democracies and flawed democracies should follow the example of O'Connell and Parnell.
24.	George Berkeley	Philosophy	Not on list	The relationship of objects to perceptions. Even if his ideas are flawed, the debate is still relevant today, in fields such as Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence.
25.	Francis Hutcheson	Philosophy	Not on list	Father of the Scottish Enlightenment.
26.	Francis Beaufort	Science	Not on list	Creator of the Beaufort scale for measuring wind force.
27.	Ernest Shackleton	Exploration	Not on list	Exploration of Antarctica.
28.	Tom Crean	Exploration	Not on list	Exploration of Antarctica.
29.	Robert O'Hara Burke	Exploration	Not on list	Exploration of centre of Australia.

Robert Boyle.

The Duke of Wellington.

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Notes

• Nearly made it in:
  • Business: Irish merchants, capitalists and economists. Many are heroes and have helped Ireland. But they are not particularly original in a world context. Just of local interest.
  • Politics: Irish political leaders after independence. Some are villains. Some are heroes. None are particularly original in a world context. I might make an exception for W.T. Cosgrave as a model of what to do after a revolution.
  • To clarify, many people not on the list did more for Ireland than a lot of the people on this list. But to be on this list, I want someone who has really done something for the world.
  • Literature: Most Irish writers. Most, I think, are too much of their time and may not last.

• I left out:
  • Politics: 1916-23 figures. I don't think the use of violence against a democracy is any model for the rest of the world.
  • Politics: Earlier Irish rebels. Irish nationalists. Irish revival figures. Most are too parochial, and have little to say to the rest of the world. Some Irish nationalists, I think, such as O'Connell and Parnell, are different - their message is universal.
  • Politics: Figures from the Northern Irish troubles. Too parochial. Have little to say to the rest of the world.
  • Religion: Most religious thought is not really an intellectual contribution. Though sometimes it laid the groundwork for intellectual contributions later.
  • Music: Most of it is too much of its time and will not last.
  • Acting: Unimportant.
  • Sport: Unimportant.

• After I made out my list, I discovered Tim Johnston's list was quite similar. Another man who believes above all in the Western Enlightenment.

• This list is now scoring pleasingly high in a Google search for:
  • The greatest Irish person ever
  • "The greatest Irish person ever"