Joseph Allen Galbraith 1854-1870
Joseph Allen Galbraith was born in Dublin on 29th November 1818. His father was a Scottish Presbyterian and merchant who died while he was a child, leaving him to support himself. He enrolled in Trinity College on 3rd November 1834, aged 16. He graduated BA in 1840, MA in 1844 and was made a Fellow in 1844. In 1845 he was elected to the Royal Irish Academy and in 1846 made a deacon of the Church of Ireland. He served as Junior Dean from 1847-1848. In 1854 he was appointed Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and served until 1870.
As Erasmus Smith’s professor, he and Samuel Haughton created a series of manuals on physics and mathematics, which were eventually introduced as textbooks to schools and colleges in Ireland and England and continued to be printed into the 1900’s. Galbraith was a popular professor and would often invite student groups to his summer home for discussion. In 1851 Galbraith and Haughton constructed an 11-metre Foucault’s pendulum to replicate the famous experiment performed in Paris. During the 1860s, he along with Samuel Haughton, performed multiple land surveys of Dublin to prove that a canal system was the best option for the city’s water supply. This was in opposition of the proposed Vartry reservoir scheme.
He became active in Irish politics in the early 1860’s and he is credited with inventing the term, ‘Home Rule’. He helped found the Home Government Association in 1870. He listened avidly to speeches by Daniel O’Connell. He was a freemason and served as Grand Chaplain of the Freemasons in the 1850s. His political views affected his career in Trinity. After serving as Erasmus Smith’s professor, he did not hold an office in Trinity College until 1880, when he was finally elected Senior Fellow. He was an active member of the Irish National League founded by Charles Stewart Parnell in 1882. He died on 20th October 1890.
Sources
- Thomas Ulick Sadlier (1935), Alumni Dublinenses: a register of students, graduates, professors, and Provosts of Trinity College in the University of Dublin (1593-1860), Thom Co Ltd, page 314, https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/concern/works/70795b624
- Desmond McCabe (2016), Galbraith, Joseph-Allen, Dictionary of Irish Biography, https://www.dib.ie/biography/galbraith-joseph-allen-a3401
- Erich Finch (2016), Three Centuries of Physics in Trinity College Dublin, Living Edition
- FIG. 1*‘Galbraith and Haughton minus Haughton’ as shown in Ireland’s Eye, 10 October 1874, 74. DeArce, Miguel. “The parallel lives of Joseph Allen Galbraith (1818—90) and Samuel Haughton (1821-97): religion, friendship, scholarship and politics in Victorian Ireland.” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature 112C (2022): 333 - 359.