John Gabriel Byrne

John Gabriel Byrne (15 July 1933 – 16 April 2016) was an Irish computer scientist and engineer. He founded the department of computer science in Trinity College Dublin, serving as its first head and professor, and has been referred to as "The Father of Computing in Ireland".

Early life and education John Gabriel Byrne was born in Dublin on 25 July 1933. He attended Belvedere College and in 1951 he entered Trinity College Dublin (TCD) to study engineering, graduating in 1956.

Career

Byrne was appointed a junior lecturer at the engineering school at TCD in 1963.

Byrne became the first head of computer science in TCD when the department was founded in 1969 and was made a Fellow in the same year, becoming Professor of Computer Science in 1973. He subsequently became a Senior Fellow. When the internet was deployed in Ireland for the first time on 17 June 1991 by the Trinity campus company, IEunet, Byrne was a director. The first Irish Ethernet connection in Ireland was installed in the computer science department in Pearse Street.

In 2005, Byrne supervised the masters' students who created the first digitised copy of the Library of Trinity College's 1872 Printed Catalogue. He advised on the Library's Stella Project in the 1990s which digitised the Library's periodicals card catalogue, and the Melon Project in the 2000s which was focused on the digitised Accessions Catalogue. Over the course of his career Byrne collected a large volume of books, publications, and collected examples of hard and software which has now became the core collection of the John Gabriel Byrne Computer Science Collection.

Death and legacy

Byrne retired from TCD in 2003. He died at a nursing home in Blackrock, Dublin on 16 April 2016.