WHOM would you invite to a fantasy dinner party? Marco Polo, maybe, for some traveller’s tales? James Joyce, for the chance that he might sing for his supper? How about Adam Smith for his take on the current state of the banking sector? And his contemporary, philosopher and bon viveur David Hume – who, I reckon, would be good company at any dinner table.
Karl Marx less so – he could be miserable if he was having trouble with the boils on his backside! – but perhaps Engels, who could be more entertaining. And I’ve always thought I’d like to spend an evening with Charles Darwin: companionable, sympathetic and interesting in equal measure.
It’s easy to think of inviting some of the big-name boys, but lately I’ve found myself more interested in spending time with some lesser-known women.
Take the “flying feminist”, Lilian Bland from Belfast, who in the early 1900s was probably the first woman in the world to build and fly her own plane. Or another northern pioneer, astronomer Annie Maunder, who travelled the world as an expert in solar eclipses. Or Aleen Cust, who shocked a Roscommon parish when they discovered their new veterinary surgeon was a woman.
Then there’s the campaigning Mrs Anne Jellicoe from Mountmellick, who set up the first technical training college for women in Ireland or Britain, in an attempt to give women a route into the world of paid employment. Or the Donegal mathematician Kay McNulty, who went on to become one of the first computer programmers, working on the ENAIC for the US military. Or the Quaker and crystallographer Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, whose career included doing time in Holloway prison as a conscientious objector during the second World War.
Who wouldn’t want to spend an evening in their company?
Now, I don’t know about you, but I hadn’t heard of most of these women – apart from Lonsdale, who is reasonably well known, and Anne Jellicoe, who featured in Prometheus’s Fire, a book on the history of Irish education – until I was called on to edit their biographies for a new book being published by the women in science and technology network (WITS), and entitled Lab Coats and Lace.
There are over a dozen women in the volume, ranging from 19th-century amateurs to 20th-century professionals, including a trio of UCD professors – Phyllis Clinch, Eva Philbin and Carmel Humphries – who in the 1960s attained the highest possible positions in academia.
The aviator Lilian Bland (1878-1971) seems to have been a maverick, and bland in name only. A sports journalist, photographer, markswoman and martial arts practitioner, she came from a relatively privileged middle-class background. Wearing breeches and smoking cigarettes, she also took an unconventional interest in flying machines.
When Louis Blériot flew across the English Channel in 1910, Lilian decided to build her own plane, using bamboo, timber and other assorted materials, and that same year her Mayfly, the first biplane built in Ireland, glided from Carnmoney Hill near Belfast. Later she added a 20hp engine, and entered the annals of aviation.
Bland next went into business, selling biplanes for £250 and gliders for £80, until her father, worried that she was headed for injury, talked her down from the air. She later farmed in Canada for several years, before settling in Cornwall to pursue “gambling, painting and gardening”, until her death there at the age of 92.
Tipperary-born Aleen Cust (1868-1937) was one determined lady: the first woman to train as a veterinarian in Britain or Ireland, she persevered with her studies in Edinburgh, despite the jeers of many, and practised in Athleague, Co Roscommon, although the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons refused to recognise her.
Only in December 1922, after new equality legislation was introduced following the first World War, did the RCVS change its regulations and open the way for Cust and other women. A quarter-century after she had graduated, she was finally admitted as an MRCVS, the first woman to be so accredited in the UK or Ireland. (It was a good week for women, that: the first woman barrister, solicitor and architect were also registered then. What heady days, and how much we take for granted now.)
Annie Dill Russell from Strabane, Co Tyrone (1868-1947, later Mrs Maunder), was unconventional in other ways: she attended university in the 1880s, when that would have been unusual for a young woman, and was so keen to work in astronomy that she accepted a lowly-paid position at Greenwich Observatory as a “computer” (doing long, complicated calculations by hand), becoming one of the first professional women astronomers.
Later, she married her boss – arguably a bad career move, as the “marriage bar” meant she had to resign from her post – and the two worked together on astronomical projects, with Annie becoming expert in eclipse photography, even designing her own camera. The Canadian government invited her to photograph the solar eclipse of 1905 but, sadly, conditions were cloudy.
In a letter, she once wrote: “I have eclipse-hunted in queer places, but I have never climbed mountains nor ski-ed on the eternal snow”. Perhaps, if she can’t make dinner, I might some day take her skiing instead. I’m sure she’d be game.
These are just some of the inspiring Irish women scientists and pioneers, who broke new ground and led the way, making it easier for others to follow. I hope, the new book – launched yesterday, on International Women’s Day – will help make these women better known. They certainly deserve to be honoured and remembered.
As for what’s on the fantasy menu – well, with companions like these, who cares about the food? I’m sure my sisters in science won’t mind if I give the staff the night off, and we order in. Bon appetit!