The Royal College of Science for Ireland (Irish: Coláiste Ríoga Eolaíocht Éireann) was created as a result of a decision of HM Treasury in 1865 to merge a number of science-oriented education bodies including the Museum of Irish Industry and Government School of Science applied to Mining and the Arts. It was originally based at 51 St. Stephen's Green but moved in the early twentieth century to a new building, the Royal College of Science in Merrion Street, designed by Sir Aston Webb, who also designed the new facade for Buckingham Palace.
The creation of the RCSI resulted from a report in 1864 of a Parliamentary Select Committee, which had recommended that a College of Science should be founded for Ireland. The Rosse Commission of 1866 outlined the scope and functions of the proposed college.
On 11 September 1867 its mission statement was outlined as
- “The object of the Royal College of Science is to supply as far as practicable a Complete Course of instruction in Science applicable to the Industrial Arts, especially those which may be classed broadly under the heads of Mining, Agriculture, Engineering, and Manufactures, and to aid in the instruction of Teachers for the local Schools of Science”
Its role was later extended to include “Mining, Engineering, and Manufactures, and in Physics and Natural Science” (RCSI Directory…for the Session 1898–99, RCSI/254). The RCSI had chairs of Mining and Mineralogy, Physics, Chemistry, Zoology, Botany, Geology, Applied Mathematics and Mechanism, Descriptive Geometry and Engineering.
In 1926 the RCSI was absorbed into University College Dublin (UCD), where it became the UCD Science and Engineering faculties. In 1964 the Physics Department of the Science Faculty became the first in UCD to move from its Earlsfort Terrace location to the new campus in Belfield. The Engineering School comprising the Departments of Agricultural Engineering, Civil Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering remained in Merrion Street until its move to the Belfield campus in 1989.
Its former headquarters in Merrion Street is now part of the Irish Government Buildings.
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—David Mercer, British screenwriter, and Karel Reisz. Mrs. Dell (Irene Handl)
“... when you make it a moral necessity for the young to dabble in all the subjects that the books on the top shelf are written about, you kill two very large birds with one stone: you satisfy precious curiosities, and you make them believe that they know as much about life as people who really know something. If college boys are solemnly advised to listen to lectures on prostitution, they will listen; and who is to blame if some time, in a less moral moment, they profit by their information?”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“What would life be without art? Science prolongs life. To consist of what—eating, drinking, and sleeping? What is the good of living longer if it is only a matter of satisfying the requirements that sustain life? All this is nothing without the charm of art.”
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“Come, fix upon me that accusing eye.
I thirst for accusation. All that was sung.
All that was said in Ireland is a lie
Breed out of the contagion of the throng,
Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)