Title: Richard Kirwan a [United] Irish Men of Science in Europe
Author(s):

R. Folk (Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, 4040 Linz, Austria)

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries have long been considered as a formative period for modern Irish political traditions such as nationalism, republicanism and unionism. For Europe it was the time of a turn over in science moving from observation to experiment and from speculation to fact. Richard Kirwan was a well known natural philosopher in Europe and a respected man of science in his time. Throughout all the wars, he was connected with his colleagues in a network reaching across Europe and even to America. Using a few examples, this article is intended to provide an insight how the network worked in a time that was marked by political conflicts and revolutionary events in both science and social live.

Key words: history of science, history of physics, natural science.

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