Tribute philatelic

 An Post was celebrating 2025 International Women's Day [8th March] a couple of days early by launching a couple of stamps featuring Irish Women in STEM. In 2023, they recognised Political women, in 2024 it was sportistas. This year scientists, and why not? But the question was - whom should the apparatchiks of the postal service choose, leaving so many worthy names on the cutting room floor? And how do they decide?? Pick two [2] out of two dozen is not going to be "fair".

Anyway; A couple of weeks ago, I was RSVP-invited to a An Post Event at The Point on the edge of Dublin's docklands. They had arranged for Jess Kelly, tech correspondent for Newstalk FM, to innerview Aoife McLysaght about her journey from school to getting her face on a National postage stamp! As did, in parallel, Jocelyn Bell Burnell [whom prev] The conversazione was similar in look&feel and take-home to one I attended last month in Wexford. Many scientists, men and women, give a hat-tip to the science teacher in their secondary school. But are not invited to drill down into the skills or attributes of that early sensei of science.

One important element of that relationship is telling the younger person that they are smart and capable and could for sure leap tall buildings. And those encouraging, validating, statements are too often rarely heard when growing up. I knew Aoife before she was famous. And it seems that I was one of the people who distinguished between ignorance and stupidity. When you're young, you may know nothing, but nevertheless have an aptitude for finding stuff out. Teaching at its best is about framing questions that spark curiosity rather than transmitting the ideas of others. At some stage in a scientific career you stop taking notes about Hooke's Law and start formulating your own rules about how the world ticks. A good mentor says: you can do this.

At the An Post Event, on Mardi Gras, they secured some time from busy Minister James Lawless T.D., Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and Linda Doyle, the Provost of TCD. It can get quite tiresome how parochial these leaders of the ship of state can be. Minister Lawless wanted to own Kathleen Lonsdale [bloboprev] because she was born in his constituency. Lonsdale died 5 years before the future Minister was born, so there's a dollop of hubris in claiming her for his bailiwick. And The Provost seems to imply that the two Stampees would have been at nothing without the imprimatur of her college. “Aoife, who holds the Chair of Evolutionary Genetics in Trinity, and Jocelyn, who is an Honorary Fellow in Trinity, have already stamped their mark in their research areas. It is fitting that they are now honoured in this way." It is just so much nonsense: Aoife and Jocelyn have made their own luck and would have done just fine regardless of what college they were associated with. It's not all about the environment, it's [also] about the intrinsic quality: resilience, smarts, openness, creativity. If Aoife hadn't worked for me in the Summer of 1996, she might not have spent the next 30 year staring at genome sequences - but rather making sense of some other aspect of the natural world.

Lawless and Doyle are, in a sense, both Prof McLysaght's bosses; because she is currently double jobbing as a) Professor of Evolutionary Genetics in Trinity College b) Government Science Advisor. Me, I'm only here for the merch [eight (8) stamps, a first day cover and two post-cards]: