Born: 1 September 1959, United Kingdom
Died: 11 June 2015
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: NA
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Brian Trench. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Mulvihill, Mary Rita (1959–2015), science communicator, was born on 1 September 1959 in London, the eldest of three daughters of Joe Mulvihill, a clothing manufacturer from Co. Carlow, and Maureen Mulvihill (née McGrath), a radiographer from Co. Clare. The family lived in London for four years before returning to Ireland to live in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin.
Mulvihill received her primary and secondary education at Sancta Maria College, Ballyroan, Co. Dublin, showing an early interest in science (her aunt Kitty was a science teacher). In order to take chemistry in the leaving certificate she attended classes at Coláiste Éanna, a Christian Brothers boys’ school, as the subject was not offered in her girls’ school. Mulvihill studied genetics at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where she was awarded a scholarship that allowed her to study for several months at Ann Arbor University, Michigan, USA. She graduated with a B.Sc. in genetics (1981), following which she took an M.Sc. in statistics and operations research (also at TCD) and later enrolled at the same university for a doctorate, studying the genetics of performance in thoroughbred horses. In 1983, however, Mulvihill left university to work as a research officer in genetics with An Foras Talúntais (the Agricultural Institute).
During this period Mulvihill began developing wider cultural interests, taking a course in creative writing and writing poems and sketches of possible plays that reflected her feminism and radicalism, as well as her disposition towards scientific inquiry. In 1987 she turned to journalism as a career, studying for a graduate diploma in journalism at the National Institute of Higher Education, Dublin (now Dublin City University (DCU)). On graduating in 1988 she became a freelance science journalist, which she remained until her premature death in 2015. Her early journalism activities included a decade as co-editor of Technology Ireland magazine, a role she used to encourage many other freelance journalists specialising in science and technology.
From the late 1980s Mulvihill wrote and presented science radio programmes on RTÉ Radio 1 and Lyric FM, and contributed science items to current affairs and other programmes. She developed a distinctive voice and innovative approaches to science storytelling, as indicated in the titles and topics of programmes she devised and presented, which included Up’n’atom, a weekly magazine series; themed series such as The perfect pint, exploring fluids, from ready-mixed concrete to shampoo to bull’s semen, Chopped, pickled and stuffed, about the Natural History Museum, and Washed, peeled and dried, about the National Botanic Gardens; and documentaries, including Pedals and pebbles, a geological tour of Dublin by bicycle, and Time, please, a history of time and timekeeping in Ireland.
Over a span of twenty years Mulvihill was a frequent contributor to the Irish Times, first as a writer of news reports and features for the news pages, and later as an occasional columnist for ‘An Irishwoman’s diary’ and the science page. From her earliest newspaper articles she eschewed the standard science reportage of covering recent discoveries and supposed breakthroughs. Instead, she approached current research topics through allusions to everyday, historical and social contexts. Mulvihill also pursued her commitment to increasing media coverage of science through active membership of the Irish Science Journalists’ Association.
Mulvihill’s conviction that science and invention deserved greater recognition in the telling of Irish history, particularly when accomplished by women, threaded through her work. In April 2015 she used the career of the Strabane-born astronomer Annie Maunder (born Annie Russell) to highlight the long history of discrimination against women in science. Mulvihill’s column (which turned out to be her last contribution to the Irish Times) was a biographical article of Russell who, with her astronomer husband Edward Walter Maunder, undertook expeditions in the 1890s to several continents to observe solar eclipses. Describing her expedition to India, Mulvihill recounted how Russell had designed her own camera, which she used to ‘capture an image of a streamer from the sun’s corona that was 10 million kilometres long, the longest that had then been seen’ (Irish Times, 9 Apr. 2015). The photograph was, however, published under her husband’s name, as happened for many female scientists at that time.
Mulvihill also advocated for greater representation of women in science and technology. A founding member of Women in Technology and Science (WITS), she served as the organisation’s inaugural chairperson (1991–3). She contributed her professional skills to WITS, editing two collections of biographical essays on Irish women that were published by the organisation: Stars, shells and bluebells: women scientists and pioneers (1997) and Lab coats and lace: the lives and legacies of inspiring Irish women scientists and pioneers (2009). Mulvihill encouraged and mentored many early-career researchers, particularly women, in communicating publicly about their scientific work. From the mid-1990s she also organised events and published a newsletter under the banner Science@Culture, reflecting her interest in locating science as part of culture and strengthening its public visibility. Film screenings, public talks and panel discussions were among the events in which science was brought into conversation with literature, drama, politics and ethics. The Science@Culture newsletter, which provided information on a wide variety of public science-related activities, was published as a solo voluntary enterprise in changing formats over fifteen years.
Gathering materials for her magnum opus was a continuing activity over six years. She corresponded, foraged and travelled widely to assemble what became Ingenious Ireland: a county-by-county exploration of Ireland’s marvels and mysteries (2002). This 500-page mix of encyclopedia, topography, dictionary of biography and gazetteer, has the scope of a life’s work rather than the undertaking of someone at a relatively early stage of her writing and publishing career. In this project and in her wider work, ‘she roamed freely over – and delved deeply into – the earth sciences, astronomy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, biology, ecology, archaeology, medicine and engineering’ (Sheridan, 182); ‘[Ingenious Ireland] combines the range and authority of an encyclopaedia with the intimacy that comes with a single authorial voice’ (Sheridan, 187). The book came to be widely appreciated as a reference work and it found a new life and wider readership on its well-received republication in 2019.
From Ingenious Ireland, Mulvihill spun-off a local guide – Ingenious Dublin – and scientific walking tours and audio guides to aspects of the country’s and capital’s scientific heritage and natural habitat. Tours included introductions to the stone used in selected Dublin buildings and the fossils they bear; the audio guides included one to the National Botanic Gardens. Mulvihill was an enthusiastic guide, willingly taking groups on tours of places of scientific interest, but also recruiting other guides to support the enterprise. She was engaged by various scientific and other agencies to write and edit texts, and to train staff in public communication. She wrote a history of the School of Cosmic Physics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and explanatory notices for a historical exhibit mounted by Dublin Port and Docks Board, among other such commissions. Mulvihill ran communication courses for Met Éireann and for Teagasc (the successor to her former employer, An Foras Talúntais) and in 2002 was appointed to a newly established government advisory body, the Irish Council for Bioethics.
Mulvhill was a voracious reader, covering a wide span of literature far beyond her professional interest in science. She and friends set up a book club in 1988, well before such groups became a widespread phenomenon; the club was still running thirty-five years later. A keen cyclist, hill walker and observer of nature, she applied her environmental consciousness to her own modest lifestyle. She urged radical rethinking of our consumer habits, including doing things very deliberately by halves – reducing the amount of washing powder and shampoo used, for example – in Drive like a woman, shop like a man: greener is cheaper (2009).
Mulvihill married physicist Brian Dolan in 2002 and together they observed the night skies, walked the hills and mountains of his native Scotland and undertook a journey to the Galapagos Islands that was extravagant by her terms, but undertaken in homage to her scientific hero, Charles Darwin.
Mary Mulvihill died of cancer in Dublin on 11 June 2015. A science communicator who worked in many formats and media, she also played a prominent role in promoting women’s involvement in science and technology and was a tireless advocate for increasing public awareness of Ireland’s scientific heritage. The house she shared with Dolan and in which she lived from 1987 now bears a plaque commemorating her as ‘science journalist – pioneer in science communication’, the first such commemoration of a science communicator among the more than seventy plaques erected by the National Committee for Commemorative Plaques in Science and Technology. The Mary Mulvihill Association has sought to maintain her legacy through a student science media award, an annual Science@Culture talk and the republication of Ingenious Ireland. Mulvihill was also honoured posthumously with a DCU alumni award for outstanding achievement in societal impact. Her collected papers, including materials used for Ingenious Ireland, are held in DCU Archives.