Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies
The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) (Irish: Institiúid Ard-Léinn Bhaile Átha Cliath) Dublin, Ireland was established in 1940 by the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of the time, Éamon de Valera under the Institute For Advanced Studies Act, 1940. The Institute consists of 3 schools. The School of Theoretical Physics, the School of Cosmic Physics and the School of Celtic studies. The directors of these schools are Professor Werner Nahm, Professor Alan Jones and Professor Fergus Kelly. The Institute takes graduate students but does not issue higher degrees as it is not a university. Graduate students working under the supervision of Institute researchers can with the agreement of the schools board be registered in any university worldwide.
History
The Institute was initially located at 64&65 Merrion Square and had two schools - the School of Theoretical Physics and the School of Celtic Studies - to which the School of Cosmic Physics was added in 1948. Currently the Institute has its schools located at two premises on the Southside of Dublin at 10 Burlington Road and 5 Merrion Square. It also maintains a presence at Dunsink Observatory in north County Dublin.
Shortly after becoming Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera investigated the possibility of setting up an institute of higher learning. Being of mathematical background, de Valera was aware of the decline of the Dunsink Observatory, where Sir William Rowan Hamilton (regarded as Ireland’s most influential mathematician) had held the position of Astronomer Royal. Following meetings with prominent academics in the fields of mathematics and astronomy, he came to the conclusion that astronomy at Dunsink should be revived and an institute for higher learning should be established.
As to the apparently odd pairing of the subjects to be covered - Theoretical Physics and Celtic Studies, these probably appeared less odd at the time. The Institute is of course modeled on the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, which was founded in 1930, and Theoretical Physics was still the research subject in 1940. Most importantly, Erwin Schrödinger was interested in coming to Ireland, and this represented an opportunity not to be missed. The School of Celtic Studies owes its founding to the great importance de Valera accorded to the Irish language. He considered it a vital element in the makeup of the nation, and therefore important that the nation should have a place of higher learning devoted to this subject.
The founding of the Institute was somewhat controversial, since at the time only a minority were successfully completing elementary education, and university education was for the privileged. By this reasoning, the creation of a high-level research institute was a waste of scarce resources. However, Éamon de Valera was aware of the great symbolic importance such a body would have on the international stage for Ireland. This thinking influenced much of de Valera's premiership (see history of the Republic of Ireland).
School of Theoretical Physics
History
The School of theoretical Physics initially consisted of just one member, Professor Erwin Schrödinger, who moved into 65 Merrion Square in February 1941. Schrödinger began his duties as Director of the school by giving two courses on quantum theory. Up to this time there had not been courses of this level available in Ireland. The lecture series were at two levels, the lower level including introductory wave mechanics, perturbation theory of quantum mechanical systems, spin of the electron and Dirac's relativistic wave equation. The higher level provided an introduction to the research being performed at the school. In June 1941 Schrödinger was joined by Walter Heitler who took the position of assistant professor. Heitler gave a course of lectures designed to introduce students to quantum theory of the chemical bond. These lectures brought together staff and students of third-level establishments in the Dublin area, exposing them to twentieth century theoretical physics. Members of the mathematical community at the time seized the opportunity to hear the lectures of Schrödinger and Heitler and within a few years the material covered began to find its way onto undergraduate university courses.
One of the objectives De Valera had in mind when he founded the institute was to provide a meeting place for scholars from University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin. For reasons both historical and religious, the academic contacts between the two institutions had previously been non-existent.
Research
In its early years the research of the school mainly focused on non-linear field theory, Meson theory, general relativity and geometry. Non-linear field theory being an attempt to combine the electromagnetic field and the gravitational field. Mesons which Heitler began researching when he arrived in 1941 were at the time believed to be the fundamental particles of the strong interaction. In 1948 John Lighton Synge was appointed senior professor, whose research interests were general relativity and geometry. Later research involved numerical analysis due to the addition of Cornelius Lanczos to the faculty and also the development of the computer.
The school has three senior professors at present: Werner Nahm, Tony Dorlas and Denjoe O'Connor. Nahm has worked on massive integrable field theories in the conformal limit and recently also on aspects of the quantum Hall effect in graphene. Dorlas has worked on a lattice model of a boson gas called the Bose-Hubbard model, on models of a spin glass and on Anderson localisation in quasi-one-dimensional systems, and also on quantum information theory. O' Connor has worked on noncommutative geometry and applications to quantum field theory, esp. as an alternative to lattice field theory, and on crossover phenomena and the renormalisation group.