HISTORY Dr Tony Scott & Reverend Dr Tom Burke
Dr Tony Scott & Reverend Dr Tom Burke Founders, Young Scientist Exhibition
The annual BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition is an extraordinary event by any standards, not only surviving but growing impressively over its 50 year history. Yet it would be wrong to assume that it must have needed extraordinary founders to establish and sustain such an exceptional exhibition. The two founders, Rev Dr. Tom Burke and Dr. Tony Scott were university researchers and lecturers working at University College Dublin and conducting research into atmospheric physics. Both had a particular skill for teaching and also for enthusing students about the excitement of science and research. It is these skills perhaps more than any others that enabled the two to conceive of and then begin an exhibition and make it work over all those decades. Earlier in their respective careers they interacted at a different level. Burke coincidentally had taught maths to Scott while he was still a student at Terenure College in Dublin. So impressed was the student that the possibility of a career in science emerged. “He was a great teacher,” says Scott of his later colleague. “He is why I did science. He was a kind person, never aggressive and encouraged the students to do their best.” Burke was born Thomas Patrick and some knew him as TP, but his later collaborator never referred to him as anything other than Tom. Burke became a Carmelite priest who went into science and teaching. He completed a BSc in physics at UCD in 1945 and then went after a MSc specialising in atmospheric physics. He completed this in 1947 and then tackled a PhD, receiving his degree in 1949. He landed at Terenure College in 1953 initially to teach maths and science but he later became the principal there. Scott describes him as an interesting guy but also a very good scientist and certainly he had an impact on the young Tony Scott. Burke’s research had a range of applications including the measurement of radon in the atmosphere.
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BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition
Scott meanwhile did go on to study physics at UCD and then undertook a Masters and then joined the staff at the university. His own specialisation was radon and aerosol measurement. Their paths crossed again when the two applied for the same job at UCD and they then became research collaborators. Scott was working to complete his PhD but the two managed to pursue joint research and published together. Part of that work involved the development of a measuring device for radon and aerosols and the instrument proved highly effective. This was in the early 1960s when the space race was on and there was a demand for relevant technologies that could support it. Their device fit the bill but it also had application for the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, so much so that it invited the two collaborators to present their work and help the US group to develop one for the institute’s own purposes. “We sent the drawings over to them but they wanted to use our device to compare against a standard,” says Scott. “Tom went out first and I followed a week later carrying a nucleus counter to calibrate the one they had in New Mexico.” They went to the Institute’s centre in a town called Socorro, about 75 miles west of Albuquerque. It was a fateful trip, not because they had a successful technology to demonstrate but because of an otherwise innocuous invitation to visit a local school. A student there was preparing to attend a “science fair” and he wanted to show the two visiting Irish scientists what it was all about. Their decision to have a look would prove to have an unexpected impact, one that would leave a lasting legacy that at the time neither of them could have imagined. It was 1963 and the two met the student –Scott recollects his name was Gary, at the Hilton Primary School in Socorro. They they watched as he set off a solid fuel rocket which went up about a mile. He then fired a second as Gary described to them what would happen at the science fair taking place in Albuquerque and how his rocket project would be presented. Scott has a picture of the student and Tom Burke standing in front of a rocket that would inspire the creation of the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition that we know today. Scott travelled back to Dublin but Burke remained in New Mexico long enough to take in that fair. “Tom
