Fantastic place, also known simply as
DIAS.
It all begins with
Eamon DeValera one of the founders of the
Irish state. He held an
American passport
and used to teach
mathematics in America.
After the
1916 Easter Rising he was not put to death by
the
British due to his passport. He went on to write the
constitution and lead the first
Government
after the
Civil War.
One of the first things he did was to set up an institute of learning dedicated to his favourite subjects,
mathematical physics and celtic studies !.
The institue was set up towards the beginning of WWII,
DeValera arranged a visa for Schrodinger to travel from
Germany to England. In Germany he was in danger
as he was a Jew. Almost as soon as Schrodinger arrived in Edngland hostilities between England and Germany were
declared. Schrodinger was now interred in England as he was German. DeValera stepped in again and arranged
for Schrodinger to travel to Ireland. Dev asked Schrodinger if he would like to be head of DIAS. Schrodinger accepted and held the post for the following 14 years. It was in Dublin that Schrodinger wrote his book What is Life.
This was one of the earliest works to theorise
the existence of Genes
DIAS was given control over the old Dunsink Observatory,
the place where William Rowan Hamilton had devised
the theory of Quaternions. On Merrion
square there is a part of DIAS which continues some of the
work taken over from Dunsink. The bus stop outside this building says Outside Cosmic Physics (I kid you not).