Annraoi de Paor was born in Waterford in 1940. He studied engineering at UCD, graduating in 1961. He earned a MS at the University of California, Berkeley in 1963 and PhD from UCD in 1967. In 1969 he became Professor of Control Theory at Salford and returned to UCD to become Professor of Electrical Engineering in 1978. He became an internationally renowned expert in control theory and also pursued interests in biomedical engineering and renewable energy. As a pioneering biomedical engineer in Irish academia, he founded the Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory at the National Rehabilitation Hospital, Dun Laoghaire. He has published over 200 research papers, he was awarded a DSc in 1974 and PhD (honoris causa) by DIT in 2004. He is a Fellow of the IEI, IET and IMA and a member of the Royal Irish Academy.
He is remembered by generations of UCD graduates for his dedication to teaching including the use of limericks to remember engineering formulae, which he has published in book form as “An Illustrated Collection of Limericks for Engineers and Physicists”. A lifelong devotee of the Irish language, he has been actively involved in the organisation of Daonscoil na Mumhan (Munster Folk School), for many years serving as chair.
‘Superhumans in Ancient Irish folklore: the career of Lugh Lámhfhada’, June 2019.
In a spirit of whimsy, some famous magical episodes in ancient Irish folklore, set almost 4000 years ago, are interpreted as engineering achievements. The illustrations are centred around the legendary Lúgh Lámhfhada, seer, general and later king. Some of the items considered are the marvellous prosthesis designed for Nuadha Airgeadlámh (Nuada of the Silver Arm) after loss of an arm, so that he could resume the kingship; the revenge of Lúgh on the sons of Tuireann, featuring among other marvels a voice-controlled ship with adaptive capacity; the epic battle of Lugh with his grandfather Balor, highlighting Balor’s death ray. Other folklore about Lugh is interwoven to give a more complete picture of this remarkable man who was deified after his death, rematerialised 2000 years later to father Ireland’s greatest hero Cú Chulainn and again about 250 years after that to father a tiny musician and seer who served Fionn Mac Chumhaill.
