PAST WINNERS YOUNG SCIENTISTS OF THE YEAR
JOHN MONAHAN 1965 No matter how long the exhibition runs there can only ever be one first winner of the Young Science accolade and that one person is John Monahan. The inaugural exhibition took place in the Mansion House Round Room, one of the few places in central Dublin big enough to handle the 230 or so students in attendance in that first year. John won the prize with an “artificial stomach”, a collection of flasks and tubing all connected together. “As I remember it, it was an apparatus to examine and describe how enzymes digest food in the body,” John says today. He recollects it as a “relatively small affair”, but he was immediately interested in participating. “I was a nerdy kid at home with my own lab. This was just another thing to play at. I never even thought of winning.” He had no bother with the initial round of cursory questions, but the judges came back with tougher ones, “to be convinced I knew what I was talking about”, he says. Security was perhaps not quite as tight back then as it is today. The students were all sent to another room after judging and were told to go home and come back the next day, but John went back to the exhibition room later while the cleaners were there and saw his project had a star attached to it. He thought little of it until the next day when the Young Scientist for 1965 was announced. “It was only the next morning when I realised good heavens I did actually win. I was totally surprised.” Needless to say John stuck with science. “I had always been interested in science and it was very clear to me from the get go I wanted to be a scientist. After the Young Scientist there was no looking back. After that I was totally motivated, and the fact that I was first that year gave me a little boost.” John completed a BSc at University College Dublin and then a PhD in Canada. He moved to Houston,
The concept was born at a science fair in New Mexico, USA
1963 36
BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition
John Monahan
First ever Young Scientist was held in the Round Room at the Mansion House and attracted 230 entries
1965
1965
Newbridge College, Co. Kildare
Máire Caitríona Ní Dhomhnaill / Mary Finn
An apparatus to demonstrate and examine the various chemical reactions that take place in the human body during digestion and to examine the effects of abnormal conditions
The “four colour problem” in topology. An attempt to form a proof or partial proof of this problem and to extend the proof to cover other surfaces
Ursuline Convent, Co. Sligo
1966
