George Reynolds' memoirs from 1968

An Award by Minister Erskine Childers George Reynolds YSE 1968 In the January of 1968 there was a foot and mouth disease scare in Ireland and the fourth annual Aer Lingus “Young Scientist of the Year” competition, due to be held in the Royal Dublin Society premises at Ballsbridge, was postponed until the following April 1968 when it was held in the Intercontinental Hotel (now Jury’s) instead.

These were not happy times for Aer Lingus, having suffered two fatal crashes of Viscount aircraft, a training flight in 1967 and the St Phelim off the Tuskar Rock in March 1968.

My project for the Young Scientist competition consisted of measuring the tiny electrical currents which are generated by mineral deposits in the ground and this was a logical combination of my two interests at that time, cycling around Wicklow and experimenting with electricity. My father had been an electrical engineer and after he died I inherited various pieces of equipment, batteries, voltmeters and the like. The idea to apply these techniques had been suggested to me by Mr. Michael Cunningham of the Geological Survey Office, then in 14 Hume Street. I had wanted to carry out my geophysical experiments over the old lead mines at Glendalough, but the distance was too far to cycle from my home in Inchicore. Instead I chose the abandoned iron mine at Cloghleagh, near Manor Kilbride, having found a reference to it in J.B. Malone’s famous hillwalking guidebook. Every weekend and holiday I cycled the two-hour journey to Cloghleagh and spent many a long day trudging around the forest at Cloghleagh making my voltage measurements and compiling a picture of how these electrical currents were generated. Two of my teachers, Noel Coffey and Con Hurley at St James (behind the Guinness Storehouse), helped me with equipment and graphic artwork for the exhibition and gave me great encouragement to enter the competition.

As the prizewinners were announced in reverse order, I was trying to work out the relationship between the Minister for Transport and Power, who had made the opening address, and the author of my favourite novel “The Riddle of the Sands”, a spy novel with many sailing descriptions. I concluded that it must be father and son, although I was not sure of the date of publication of the novel. Mr. Childers spoke about the pace of advance of science in Ireland since 1945 and said he was pleased to see that science and mathematics were no longer considered a “boy’s subject” and that girls made up a significant proportion of the entrants. In fact, the first three Young Scientists’ exhibitions had shown a preponderance of girls (1965:71%, 1966:76%, 1967:73% ) and this was the first year when the boys had responded somewhat to the challenge, accounting for 39% of the total of 190 entries. The original entry had been about 350 but as the farming community had been significantly affected by the foot & mouth restrictions, a considerable number had to be unfortunately withdrawn.

Mr. Childers went on to say that the advance into the scientific age in Ireland had not yet sufficiently accelerated. “The number of science pupils had doubled since 1961”, he continued, “and the Government had made increasing funding available for research and development in the fields of science and technology”. He made a prophesy about the progress of scientific achievement which would take place by the year 2000: “there would be language translation by computer; primitive artificial life;

blanket immunisation against disease; education by mechanical means; economic farming and mining of sea areas; new ultra-light synthetic materials; hypersonic flight at 15,000 mph.; mechanical organisation of farming and automatic vehicle control on main roads”. Whatever about the hypersonic flight, the automatic vehicle control and the artificial life, he could certainly claim some accuracy of prediction on the other six prophesies.

On hearing my name announced, I was propelled through the noisy throng of schoolmates and on to the podium where I was presented with my trophy and a cheque for £250, a not inconsiderable sum for a young student in those days. There followed endless photo opportunities, including one with Mr. Childers who told me to “smile and keep talking about anything for the photographers!”. I asked him about the “Riddle of the Sands” and his smile was replaced by a faraway look tinged with sadness. The moment passed, and he asked me if I had enjoyed the book, confirming that, like me, he had lost a dear father. It was many years later, when he had become President of Ireland, only to die suddenly a short time later, before I learned the tragic events that surrounded that loss.

Winning the award set me on the road to a career in mineral exploration with a degree in geology at Trinity College and a masters in geophysics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. I also received a bursary from Roadstone Ltd., thanks to the association of the managing director Thomas Roche with his days hauling sand and gravel from his depot in Inchicore.

Irish Base Metals, the operators of the Tynagh lead-zinc mine in Galway employed me as mineral exploration geophysicist until I emigrated to Spain in 1983 to work for Billiton Española, a subsidiary of Shell. Once again, experimentation in geophysics paid off as we discovered a major deposit of copper and zinc at a record depth of over 300 metres in the south of Spain near Seville, and which is now giving employment to about 600 people and will operate until 2025.

Still in geophysics and operating as a self-employed consultant, I have located groundwater resources in the Sahara, assisted the police in locating unmarked graves, discovered deposits of sepiolite clay in Spain (used for cat litter), gold in the Philippines, spa water in Germany, lead and nickel in Sweden, diamonds in Finland and uranium in Mauritania. I have even returned to Cloghleagh and tried out some more modern geophysical techniques, some of which worked far better than those I used in my Young Scientist project!