William Molyneux, founding member of the society.
The Dublin Philosophical Society was founded in 1683[1][2] by William Molyneux with the assistance of his brother Sir Thomas Molyneux and the future Provost and Bishop St George Ashe.[3] It was intended to be the equivalent of the Royal Society in London (with which it maintained cultural ties) as well as the Philosophical Society at the University of Oxford. Whilst it had a sometimes close connection with the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, its closest institutional connection was with Trinity College Dublin.
- ^ Greta Jones, Elizabeth Malcolm (1999), Medicine, Disease and the State in Ireland, 1650–1940, Cork University Press, p. 91, ISBN 978-1-85918-230-7
- ^ W.R.Wilde (1844), "Memoir of the Dublin Philosophical Society of 1683", Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 3: 160–176, JSTOR 20489545
- ^ T. D. Spearman (1992), 400 Years of Mathematics "Molyneux resolved to establish such a society, 'agreeable to the design of the Royal Society', in Dublin. His main accomplice in this was St. George Ashe, who was Miles Symner's successor as Donegall Lecturer in Mathematics and later became Provost."