Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 21 June 2012

Technical Memories (Part 21)

Wandering and Wondering

In 1908 Alfred Leonard was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Research Scholarship (continued from last week). The 1851 Research Fellowship was and still is a UK scheme conducted by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 to annually award a three-year research scholarship to approximately eight “young scientists or engineers of exceptional promise”. Today candidates are required to be citizens of Britain, the Republic of Ireland, Pakistan or a Commonwealth of Nations country. The Commission has been awarding fellowships and scholarships since 1891. The Commission’s Archive contains material relating to various schemes as well as to the students who have held these prestigious awards. Previous award holders include 12 Nobel Laureates.

From his scholarship Alfred Leonard spent two years at the University of Bonn where he obtained the degree of Ph.D. He notes in his memoirs:

“The chemical institute was a detached building with several laboratories and two lecture theatres…in the main research laboratory there were fifteen Germans, three British, two Russians, and one French student…the majority were very keen on their work and it was interesting to discuss our problems amongst ourselves. These consisted largely in the preparation of new compounds and combustions thereof to verify their composition. My line of country was connected with tartrazin and related compounds”.

Alfred carried out work with Professor Richard Anschütz who had succeeded Professor Friedrich August Kekulé as Director of the Department of Chemistry. Kehulé was a German organic chemist. From the 1850s until his death, he was one of the most prominent chemists in Europe, especially in theoretical chemistry. He was the principal founder of the theory of chemical structure. Of the first five Nobel Prizes in Chemistry Kekulé’s most famous work was on the structure of benzene. Richard Anschütz was interested in stereochemistry and studied the isomerism of unsaturated acids with Kekulé. Anschütz made a point of teaching chemistry to British POWs in the First World War because of his admiration for another chemist, Archibald Scott Couper’s work on chemical structures. In later life Anschütz became interested in the history of chemistry. His name is associated with the Anschütz synthesis of anthracenes from substituted benzoyl chlorides. He had a big influence on the future work of the Cork born scholar Alfred Leonard.

On Bonn, Alfred noted:

“Bonn is situated on the Rhine about twenty miles above Cologne at a point where the river is some 500 yards wide and becoming really picturesque. It was popular to make excursions by pleasure steamers to Godesberg, Remagen, Konigwinter and many other beauty spots, but the most beautiful of all these was the valley of the Ahr which we used to explore on foot.”

In student life Alfred tells of the tennis that was catered for in the summer on an enormous flat piece of land laid out in hard gravel courts. In winter, when frost arrived this land was flooded artificially and this created an extensive area for skating. A full brass band provided suitable music and restaurant catered for the comfort of the skaters, while coloured lights at night gave the appearance of a “fairyland”. According to Alfred, “the orchestras at dances were superb and played music, very different from what passes for dance music today [1950]. The spirit of carnival reigned supreme on the three days preceding Ash Wednesday; business houses closed and the whole population joined in the general festivities including elaborately bedecked processions, fancy-dress dances and increased consumption of beer and wine.”

In 1910 Alfred returned to Ireland and became an assistant to Professor Senior in the Department of Chemistry, University College, Galway. A year later he was appointed Head of the Department of Chemistry in the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute, Cork, where he remained until 1916 when he rejoined the Royal College of Science, Dublin, as Lecturer in Physical and Metallurgical Chemistry. By the Act of 1926, he became a member of staff of the University College. As a teacher, Dr. Leonard was eminently successful, and generations of students came to appreciate his meticulous presentation of lectures and the thorough grounding he gave in laboratory skills. His training in the College of Science followed by his experience in Bonn had instilled in him a strict sense of discipline, and students in his charge rapidly learned that an untidy bench or sloppy notebook called for comment that was not readily forgotten. The high standards he maintained made an impact, and it was quite common for students to return as graduates in later years to pay tribute and to thank him for the training they had received.

Alfred Leonard played an active part in organising the profession of Chemistry in Ireland. He was associated with the Irish Chemical Association (Cumann Ceimicidhe na h-Eireann), founded by Professor Hugh Ryan in 1923, and when the ‘old Cumann’ became the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland in 1950, he was elected President of the new body. He retired from his statutory post in 1957, but continued to help, until prevented by illness, with the teaching in the Department of Chemistry. He died on 28 August 1966.

To be continued…

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 14 June 2012

Technical Memories (Part 20)

Conversaziones in Science

Alfred Godfrey Leonard, the chemistry lecturer of the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute in 1912, had a long and chequered teaching and research career. His memories, some of which he published reveal he received his degree education at the Royal College of Science, Dublin in St Stephen’s Green. Being a government institution, it was run with strict discipline. Punctuality was enforced and non-attendance at any class or lecture had to be explained satisfactorily, or fines were enacted.

Alfred Leonard started attendance at the college at a time of great transformation. By the end of the nineteenth century the research and teaching facilities of the Royal College of Science for Ireland were no longer adequate.  Constant complaints from the college’s council about the severe overcrowding in the building led to the establishment of a government committee to assess the accommodation requirements for the college. The new building was originally designed to accommodate the Royal College of Science for Ireland as well as government activities transferred from London to Dublin. In March 1904 the London architect Aston Webb and Cork born Thomas Manly Deane were appointed joint architects. Both men had experience in designing public buildings. Webb had designed the Royal College of Science and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (and was later to re-design the principal facade of Buckingham Palace) and Deane had partnered his father as architect for the National Library and National Museum in Dublin. By the mid-1920s the College had been absorbed into University College Dublin, and the complex housed the headquarters of government of an independent Ireland.

A recent exhibition on the history of government buildings in the National Library in Dublin outlines that the exterior of the college is in the ‘Edwardian baroque’ style; the intention of the architects was to continue the classical tradition of Dublin’s eighteenth-century public buildings. The imposing front facade was surmounted by a dome, under which was a clock ‘the four faces of which can be seen from distant parts of the city’. Oliver Sheppard and Albert Power provided the sculptures, with the main entrance flanked by statues of the great Irish scientists Robert Boyle and William Rowan Hamilton and overlooked by a figure representing Science. Within the building there were four storeys of lecture theatres and laboratories with all the most up-to-date apparatus for scientific experiments (at an estimated cost of £15,000). Electricity was to be used for light; there were elevators, and although many of the rooms were furnished with fireplaces there was also a central heating system.

A member of the student’s union in 1904, Alfred noted: “the foundation stone of the present college in Merrion Street was to be laid by King Edward VII, but we found that no seating accommodation had been provided at the ceremony for the students. A meeting was at once summoned and a letter sent to the authorities pointing out the indignity to students. The reply stated that provision would be made to seat a few student representatives. Our reply went back ‘all or none’. Then the Board of Works got busy and erected a stand to accommodate all the students. Unfortunately this stand did not give a view of the ceremony and when the students discovered this, a unanimous vote was given against any students taking a seat in the stand”.

A conversazione was held annually under the auspices of the Students’ Union, originally due largely and to the energy and initiative of Mr. J. F. Crowley, a student of engineering.  Every student gave his time to set up some working experiment to attract the attention of the layman and illustrate the experiment to attract the type of work done in the college. A string orchestra was engaged, short lectures, refreshments provided and the guests were received by the Dean. In 1905, the Chemical Association came into being. Its methods were simple and efficient. Alfred Leonard noted: “Saturday being a college holiday, we met at 10am when some student gave a description of a manufacturing process in operation. The number of chemical factories in Dublin being very limited, a petition was sent to the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for the students to visit factories in England. This was approved and it became a custom for senior students to spend about ten days once a year in visiting factories in England and Scotland”.

In June 1905, Alfred Leonard agreed to walk with a friend of his Thomas Alexander, now a veterinary surgeon from Dublin to their homes in Cork. This they accomplished in five days. In June 1914, they covered the same route with certain stops in four days in a second hand motor car costing £15.

As demonstrator in the chemical department from 1905-08, it was Alfred Leonard’s duty to assist Professor Hartley in his research work on absorption spectra and to assist James H. Pollok in conducting laboratory work for first year students.  Alfred noted of that time, “it was then I found that the best way to learn about a subject was to teach it. Students have no hesitation in questioning a young demonstrator, but are naturally timid in approaching the senior staff”.

To be continued…

Caption:

645a. Government Buildings, Dublin 2012 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town 

Cork Independent, 7 June 2012

Technical Memories (Part 19)

Experiments in a Shed

 “It was my goof fortune in the early nineties to attend St. Luke’s National School, Cork, the headmaster of which, John B. Crawford ruled metaphorically with rod of iron. Crawford was a giant in stature and was known generally as ‘Long John’. He was a gifted teacher and in addition to the ordinary routine subjects gave us instruction in the fundamentals of sound, light, magnetism, electricity, anatomy and physiology…such experiments may seem trivial to the youth of today, but appeared very wonderful and intriguing to us, youngsters of fifty years ago” (Alfred Godfrey Leonard, address to Institute of Chemistry of Ireland, 22 November 1950).

The lecturer in physics and chemistry at the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute in 1912 was Alfred Godfrey G. Leonard. He gave an address to the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland in 1951, which was published in their journal called Orbital. An obituary to Dr. Leonard is also listed in the same journal in 1966. Over his career, he worked with others in making chemistry a main stream subject in educational organisations across Ireland.

A native of Cork, Alfred Leonard received his early education at St Luke’s National School in Montenotte. In 1898, he moved to the Cork Grammar School, at Sidney Place on Wellington Road. The school was the property of, and under the general control of, the City of Cork Church School Board. In street directories in the early 1900s, this boarding and day school prepared boys for the university, army, navy, civil service, legal and medical professions and mercantile pursuits. There were a few scholarships from the elementary schools. The general work of the school included training for the Intermediate Examinations, Science and Art Department, Agricultural and Technical Department, and the General Synod’s examination in Holy Scripture.

Alfred received teaching from the headmaster Rev. Ralph Harvey, Osborn Bergin, George Taylor and Louis McNamara. Osborn Joseph Bergin (1873-1950), an eminent scholar in the field of Irish Studies, was a native of Cork. He was educated at Cork Grammar School and Queen’s College Cork (now University College Cork). He learned Irish from Pádraig Ó Laoghaire, a national teacher in Beara. Bergin was appointed a lecturer in Celtic at Queen’s College Cork in 1897. Bergin was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy in March 1907. He held the post of Professor of Old and Middle Irish at University College Dublin from 1909 to 1940.

On the teaching of science at the Cork Grammar School, Alfred Leonard notes that:

“Prior to 1900, the teaching of science was under the control of the Science and Art Department, South Kensington. We received oral instruction in sound, light, heat and mechanics which enabled some of us to pass examinations conducted annually by the Department. On rare occasions inspectors from the Department visited the school and when this occurred prompt warning was sent to the Christian Brothers’ School next door, a friendly act, which was reciprocated by them should an inspector arrive there first. On one occasion, I remember, we were engaged in mathematics when the warning arrived and promptly the few pieces of apparatus possessed by the school were brought out and the instruction was changed to Natural Philosophy; but all to no purpose, as the inspector did not appear.”

When the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction was established in 1900, Alfred remembers the starting of a campaign for the introduction of experimental science teaching in schools, and laboratories were established in almost secondary schools. When the laboratory was under construction in the Grammar School, Mr. England, who had been trained in Owen’s College, Manchester taught Alfred and his class. Alfred notes that he and his friend wished to move beyond oral teaching and wished to have practical experience;

“Most of our pocket-money went in the purchase of small quantities of very ordinary chemicals. These we used at home in an outhouse for the preparation of hydrogen, oxygen, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, chlorine, bromine, iodine, carbon dioxide and such like substances. Instead of flasks we used stoneware pickle jars; corks were bored with red-hot skewers and heating effected by a spirit lamp.”

In 1902 Alfred won a Government Scholarship to the Royal College of Science in Dublin. The scholarship amounted to 21/- per week of the college (30 weeks) with a travelling allowance to and from home. Some 40 students entered the college each year. The first year course was common to all faculties and laid a sound foundation in mathematics, mechanics, chemistry, physics, practical geometry, and free-hand drawing. Professor Walter Hartley delivered the first year lectures, which were fully illustrated with experimental demonstrations. A pioneer in the area of spectroscopy, Hartley was the recipient of many international honours. Among his most significant analysis was his work on the relationship between molecular structure and absorption spectra, and his discovery of the absorption of ultraviolet radiation by ozone. Many of his studies addressed practical applications of scientific research, covering subjects such as dyes for the Irish textile industry, studies for the brewing and distilling industries and chemicals for the prevention of potato blight.

To be continued…

Caption:

644a. Alfred Godfrey Leonard, c.1960 (source: Institute of Chemistry of Ireland)