O'Donnell, John Patrick

by Linde Lunney

O'Donnell, John Patrick (1920–2004), chemical engineer, was born 3 August 1920 in Kilmallock, Co. Limerick, one of three children of John O'Donnell and his wife Kitty. His parents owned a newsagent's shop in the town. John was a pupil at Bruree national school (where Éamon de Valera (qv) had once been a pupil), and when he was awarded a scholarship, went to the Christian Brothers secondary school in Limerick city. He won another scholarship to attend UCD, and in 1943 graduated first in his class, with the degrees of BE and B.Sc., both with first class honours. He took a job with the Electricity Supply Board (1943–5), and also worked briefly for the Irish Sugar Company, before going back to UCD to undertake postgraduate research on heat transfer and fuel cells. He was awarded a master's degree in engineering in 1948. The following year he was appointed as lecturer in the department of mechanical and electrical engineering. In the mid 1950s, the university planned a new chemical engineering course to provide training for people in the developing chemical industries in Ireland. O'Donnell's research and industry experience were particularly relevant for the new discipline, and he was asked in 1956 to take charge of the first class in chemical engineering. In 1957 he was appointed professor and head of the new department of chemical engineering, the first in the country. In the thirty‑one years of his leadership, the department grew considerably and graduates took up important roles in industries that were of increasing importance in the Irish economy. O'Donnell maintained his research interests, but most of his attention was now directed towards developing his department, his college and his scientific discipline.

He achieved wider prominence within UCD in several ways; he was a founding member and officer of the Academic Staff Association (1960), and in 1964 was elected to the UCD governing body, of which he remained a member until 1976. In 1967, when the minister for education, Donogh O'Malley (qv), sought to unify UCD and TCD into a single new university, O'Donnell was one of a small group of dissidents on the UCD governing body who opposed a plan prepared by the president of the college, Jeremiah Joseph Hogan (qv), which envisaged the strict division of departments and faculties between the two colleges, so that they would be complementary to each other, each college being in the sole possession of a faculty that the other lacked. Despite encountering thundering criticism from the college authorities, O'Donnell and a number of other members of the governing body, including Patrick Lynch (qv) and Desmond Williams (qv), argued in favour of the faculties of arts and science being retained in both colleges to preserve the identity and character of the colleges' traditions. He was one of those members of the governing body who went on to sign a minority report to be sent to the government. The merger proposal petered out in the early 1970s. In 1972, he was unsuccessful in a bid to be elected president of UCD. He was a member of the academic council for 31 years, and was acting registrar of the college in 1986.

O'Donnell was widely seen as the father of chemical engineering in Ireland, and not only as the teacher and mentor of many skilled graduates; he also helped form policy in the public sector. The government appointed him chairman of the state backed fertilizer firm Nítrigin Éireann Teoranta, and he was on the boards of several other manufacturing companies. He wielded great influence as an advisor to successive governments in his role as a member of the scientific advisory board of the Department of Education, and in 1962 worked for the newly established international body, the Organisation for Economic Co‑Operation and Development, reporting on the training of Irish scientists and technicians with special regard to the needs of industry. In his reports on his findings, O'Donnell supported the establishment of regional technical institutes and later, as a member of a steering committee in 1966–7, helped oversee the beginnings of their development into regional technical colleges to train thousands of students. O'Donnell was a board member of the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards, and also of the National Council for Educational Awards.

He was equally significant in the development of the profession of chemical engineering in Ireland, as a vice president of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE), and in establishing its Irish committee in 1962; he was founding chairman of the Irish branch of IChemE in 1978. In 1989, IChemE awarded him the Arnold Greene Medal in honour of his contribution to the profession in Ireland. He was chairman of Cumann na nInnealtóirí in 1965–6, but worked along with colleagues to bring about its amalgamation in 1970 with the longer‑established Institution of Engineers of Ireland. He was too a fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

O'Donnell was prominent, with other UCD colleagues participating in a European initiative from 1981, in the establishment of the faculty of engineering and technology in the university in Amman, Jordan. He also had a great interest in China and in relations between Ireland and China. He was president of the Irish–Chinese Cultural Society (ICCS) 1994–7 and led an ICCS delegation to China in 1996.

He married Veronica Geoghegan (originally from Athlone, Co. Westmeath), an artist who also sometimes acted with the Abbey Theatre. Their wedding was in Dublin on 7 September 1948, and they had two daughters and two sons. His wife and children survived him at his death in Dublin on 15 February 2004; he died following a stroke.