Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Visit to Trinity College Dublin
Posted on: 17 May 2011
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh will visit Trinity College Dublin founded by Queen Elizabeth I, today (Tuesday, May 17th, 2011). In honour of the royal visit, Provost, Dr John Hegarty, will host a reception in Trinity’s Long Room situated in the College’s 18th century Old Library building, where Ireland’s wealth of talent in all aspects of research and education at both Trinity College Dublin and the wider university sector in Ireland, in culture and the arts, and innovation and entrepreneurship will be represented.
Queen Elizabeth I provided the legal charter to establish the university in 1592 in response to the petition of the citizens of Dublin for a seat of learning for Ireland. The reception in the Long Room aims to showcase how this has contributed to Ireland’s educational landscape and to generations of intellectual thought, debate and rigorous scholarship.
For over 400 years Trinity has produced some of the world’s great minds across the sciences and the humanities, including two Nobel Laureates, Samuel Beckett in literature and Ernest Walton in science. Literary greats such as Jonathan Swift, Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde are followed by the creative genius of more recent graduates, such as writers, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Anne Enright and Sebastian Barry. Philosophers such as George Berkeley and Edmund Burke are together with more contemporary alumni such as former UN Human Rights Commissioner, Dr Mary Robinson. These have been joined by scholars across the growing higher education sector in Ireland.
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II meets students and staff of Trinity College during her visit to the College.
Commenting on the significance of the visit, Provost, Dr John Hegarty says: “The visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Trinity College today is a milestone in our history; Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter to a small College ‘near Dublin’ ? a College that she never saw. Little could she have known how Dublin itself and her College would grow in the intervening centuries to become a University where some of the world’s significant discoveries would be made in the sciences, and that it would nurture some of the world’s greatest writers and scholars. It is with great pride that we welcome Queen Elizabeth II to Trinity, a place of learning that provides our students with opportunities that would have been unimaginable in 1592. Joining us today are distinguished scholars from across the whole island of Ireland. I am confident that ? working together ? we can create a bright future for our people. We will look back at this day with particular joy. Our links with our sister island are long and deep; today is a historic celebration of that.”
In providing a contemporary showcase of Ireland, the Queen will meet with members of Trinity’s staff, students and academic community along with representatives from the sciences, medicine, arts, humanities and culture from both Trinity College and the wider university sector in Ireland, as well as those from leading Irish institutions and society. Full details are available online.
The groups will highlight areas in which Ireland excels: biological and life sciences; music and visual arts; literature and theatre; history and culture; physical sciences; environment and energy; medicine; politics and society*. They will be joined by representatives from the higher education sector; student body as well as the local community in the environs of Trinity College in Dublin. They will be introduced to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II by Trinity scholars and teachers drawn from all of these fields.
During their visit to the Long Room, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh will be escorted by Provost, Dr John Hegarty and greeting party¹ where they will also view the Foundation Charter of Trinity College Dublin, by Queen Elizabeth I, as a seat of learning, and a coat of arms, believed to be from the original Elizabethan building of the College.
They will be shown the Book of Kells², a 9th-century gospel manuscript written and illustrated by Columban monks, famous throughout the world for its beautifully intricate decoration and representative of Ireland as a seat of art and learning.
They will see the College Harp – Ireland’s oldest harp dating from the 15th century and on which Ireland’s national emblem is based.
The Queen will also see a copy of the first book ever printed in the Irish language in Ireland which was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth I in 1571, an Alphabet and Catechism ‘Aibidil Gaoidheilge agus Caiticiosma’.
The current exhibition in the Long Room celebrates’s 300-years of Trinity’s School of Medicine (1711-2011) titled ‘The Best Doctors in the World are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman’ (Jonathan Swift). The Trinity School of Medicine pioneered medical education in Ireland and was joined in the course of the nineteenth century by medical schools in the newer Irish universities. Together they produced generations of skilled practitioners who gained distinction around the world.
Physicist and Nobel Laureate Ernest Walton is also remembered in a smaller exhibition where his Nobel citation and medal along with personal and academic papers donated to Trinity are on display.
About Trinity College Dublin:
Trinity College Dublin, established in 1592 is recognised globally as Ireland’s premier university. Ranked in 52nd position in the top 500 world universities and 14th position in the top European universities by the QS World University Rankings 2010. In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2010, Trinity is ranked 76th in the top 500 world universities and 15th in the top European universities.
It is a multi-discipline university with Faculties of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences; Engineering, Mathematics, and Science; and Health Sciences.
Trinity College is located on a 19 hectare campus in the centre of Dublin city. Its historic buildings are major tourist attractions and are located alongside modern award-winning architecture of more recent generations such as the recently opened Trinity Long Room Hub, a humanities research institute. A new state-of-the-art Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute will open next month which will transform the scientific research landscape of the university.
Trinity has 16,800 students, of which 5,330 are postgraduate Masters and Doctorate students. Some 16% of students are from outside of Ireland. The university employs some 820 academic teaching staff, of which 43% are international. Many of Trinity College Dublin’s alumni have helped shape history and include two Nobel prize winners – Ernest Walton for physics and Samuel Beckett for literature. The President of Ireland Mary McAleese is a former law professor in Trinity. The University’s graduates and scholars keep Ireland firmly at the forefront of science. Past discoveries still relevant today include Sir William Rowan Hamilton’s mathematics, Ernest Walton’s splitting of the atom, Denis Parson Burkitt’s discovery of a form of lymphoma named after him, Vincent Barry’s cure for leprosy in 1954, and the development of a prototype for the nicotine patch in 1990. These have been followed in recent times by, for example, breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s disease, malaria and multiple sclerosis, as well as the recent identification of the first three human-specific genes in 2009.
As Ireland’s premier university, the pursuit of excellence through research and scholarship is at the heart of a Trinity education. Trinity has an outstanding record of publications in high-impact journals and leading academic publishers and a track record in winning research funding which is among the best in the country. Interdisciplinarity forms a key element in the College strategy in increasing Trinity’s international standing as a research-led university. It has developed significant international strength in its research in eight major themes which include globalisation; digital arts and humanities; telecommunications; nanoscience; neuroscience; ageing and independent living; immunology and molecular medicine/ cancer.
1. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s tour of the Long Room
The Queen and Duke will be met by the greeting party made up of the Provost, Dr John Hegarty and his wife, Mrs Neasa Ní Chinnéide Hegarty, the Chancellor of the University of Dublin, Trinity College, Dr Mary Robinson, the College Librarian, Robin Adams, the Minister for Education and Skills, Ruairí Quinn and Minister of State, Ciaran Cannon.
They will view the following:
Book of Kells: Two volumes of the Book of Kells will be on display. An illuminated page from the Gospel of St Luke – The entombment of the body of Jesus. Text page from the Gospel of St John ‘I am the living bread which came down from heaven’ (more details below).
Coat of Arms above Long Room door of the original Elizabethan College buildings nothing now exists, although the coat of arms of Queen Elizabeth I is believed to have come from the original Chapel. They will also view a 17th-century portrait of Queen Elizabeth I.
‘Aibidil Gaoidheilge agus Caiticiosma’ is a copy of the first book ever printed in Irish which was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth I in 1571. It was printed by John Kearney on an Irish typeface (the first ever) – this year is the 440th anniversary of its publication. The Library’s conservationists will be working on the book when the Queen views it.
The College Harp: Dating from the 15th century but more romantically linked to the Irish high king Brian Boru, who died at the battle of Clontarf in 1014. It is the finest known example of this traditional Irish instrument. It is made of oak and willow with 29 brass strings. The design for our national emblem is based on this harp. Harpist Siobhan Armstrong will be playing a replica of the harp throughout the visit.
Current Long Room exhibition: ‘The best Doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet and Doctor Merryman’ (Jonathan Swift) celebrating the tercentenary of the School of Medicine from 1711 to 2011.
The Charter: The Royal Charter of Queen Elizabeth 1 ‘incorporating’ Trinity College Dublin in 1592.
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh will sign the Visitor’s Book. There will be a group of approximately 250 students and staff randomly selected from 600 expressions of interest from across the College outside the Old Library in a cordoned area to greet the Queen.
Rebecca Kilkelly, a fourth-year French and Sociology student in Trinity will present the Queen with a posy of flowers on her departure. (Rebecca’s Great Grandmother Alice Smyth, while a pupil in Loreto Abbey, Rathfarnham met Queen Victoria when she visited the school in 1901.)
The bouquet has been prepared using floral cuttings from The National Botanic Gardens Glasnevin. With the Trinity college crest in mind, particularly the Trinity blue, the flowers are blue and yellow in colour. Most of these flowers are native to Ireland.
2. About the Long Room and Book of Kells
The Book of Kells is celebrated for its beautifully intricate decoration. The manuscript contains the four Gospels in Latin based on a Vulgate text, written on vellum (prepared calfskin), in a bold and expert version of the script known as “insular majuscule”.
The place of origin of the Book of Kells is generally attributed to the scriptorium of the monastery founded around 561 by St Colum Cille on Iona, an island off the west coast of Scotland. In 806, following a Viking raid on the island which left 68 of the community dead, the Columban monks took refuge in a new monastery at Kells, County Meath. It must have been close to the year 800 that the Book of Kells was written, although there is no way of knowing if the book was produced wholly at Iona or at Kells, or partially at each location.
It has been on display in the Old Library at Trinity College Dublin from the mid 19th century. Two volumes are on public view, one opened to display a major decorated page, and one to show two pages of script. The volumes are changed at regular intervals.
The Long Room: The main chamber of the Old Library is the Long Room, and at nearly 65 metres in length, it is filled with 200,000 of the Library’s oldest books. When built (between 1712 and 1732) it had a flat plaster ceiling and shelving for books was on the lower level only, with an open gallery. By the 1850s these shelves had become completely full; largely as since 1801 the Library had been given the right to claim a free copy of every book published in Britain and Ireland. In 1860 the roof was raised to allow construction of the present barrel-vaulted ceiling and upper gallery bookcases.
Marble busts line the Long Room, a collection that began in 1743 when 14 busts were commissioned from sculptor Peter Schemakers. The busts are of the great philosophers and writers of the western world and also of men connected with Trinity College, famous and not so famous. The finest bust in the collection is of the writer Jonathan Swift by Louis Francois Roubiliac.
The band of gold lettering below the gallery commemorates benefactors of the 17th and 18th centuries: James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh; King Charles II; William Palliser, Archbishop of Cashel; Claudius Gilbert; Theophilius Butler.
There are temporary exhibitions held in the Long Room which display the rich holdings of the Library and encourage further research.
More information can be found at http://www.tcd.ie/Library/bookofkells/
3. Some of Ireland’s leading areas of excellence
In biological and life sciences, Ireland is ranked first in the world in molecular genetics and genomics, third in the world in immunology research and sixth in the world in molecular biology and genetics.
Irish researchers’ output in the physical sciences outstrips the world, EU and OECD averages for impact by citations per paper and in key economically relevant domains such as nanoscience in which Ireland is ranked sixth globally.
In relation to environment and energy, Ireland’s unique natural bounty of tidal, wave and wind energy is the focus of leading research initiatives. The country is also ranked seventh in the world in biofuels and is to the fore of research into alternative energy and new modalities of transportation among others.
Building on over 300 years of tradition in medical education on the island, the excellence and focus of Irish medical scientists has produced the world’s highest impact research output in Alzheimer’s disease, while groundbreaking activity in diseases as diverse as cancer, diabetes, psychiatric disorders and innovation in the delivery of new surgical interventions and advanced medical devices have significant socioeconomic benefit.
Grown from the cultural heartbeat of Irish traditional music, through the transformational global phenomena such as U2, Enya and Riverdance and from the stunning decoration of global heritage treasures such as the Book of Kells, to the breadth of output of artists such as Francis Bacon, Harry Clarke and Louis Le Brocquy the impact of Irish creativity in music and the visual arts is globally unparalleled.
The depth of Irish historical scholarship and culture is strongly reflected in the top 50 international ranking of research in the arts and humanities. The pedigree of literature and theatre arising from this small island is hugely significant and the cultural footprint of Irish authors, poets and playwrights on the world stage is immense.
RTE footage of the Queen’s visit to Trinity College Dublin is available at http://www.rte.ie/player/#v=1098557. ( Coverage of the visit to Trinity begins at 40 minutes into footage after a visit to the Garden of Remembrance)
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