TCD Scientist elected to the US National Academy of Sciences

Posted on: 18 May 2005

Prof. Michael Coey, Department of Physics, Trinity College Dublin has been elected to membership of the National Academy of Sciences as a foreign associate, in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Prof. Coey is the only Irish-based scientist to belong to the Academy. He is possibly only the second Irishman to be elected a member of this august American Academy, the first being another Trinity Professor and one of the world’s greatest mathematicians, Sir William Rowan Hamilton. Hamilton was elected in 1864, one year after the Academy was founded by Abraham Lincoln. A Professor of Experimental Physics, Michael Coey is also Deputy Director of the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices. His research interests include magnetic, electronic, and structural properties of solids, spin electronics, amorphous materials, physical properties of minerals, and magnetoelectrochemistry. This prestigious achievement was announced by the Provost of Trinity College, Dr. John Hegarty at the Trinity Week Symposium. “Election to membership in the Academy is considered one of the highest honours that can be accorded a scientist or engineer,” he said in warmly congratulating Prof. Coey. Organised by the Hamilton Mathematics Institute, the Symposium entitled ‘Hamilton in Trinity: A Celebration’ included talks on the way Trinity was at the time of Hamilton, on some of the global experiments that Trinity was involved with, a talk on Creativity by Brendan Kennelly and a demonstration of Conical Refraction, a strange phenomenon predicted to exist by Hamilton and discovered in Trinity.