Edward Joseph Conway, 1894-1968

Abstract

Edward Joseph Conway was an international figure in biophysics and an outstanding Irish scientist. He was born near Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, on 3 July 1894. Nenagh was then, as now, a prosperous market town, the centre of beautiful and fertile country, mainly devoted to dairy farming. Conway always retained a great love of the Irish countryside, and for the fly-fishing which he enjoyed in the nearby Shannon. Revisiting it for a civic reception in his seventieth year, he said: ‘I feel that I have come home and that this very agreeable town in North Tipperary, situated as it is close to the Keeper Mountain and Lough Derg on the lordly Shannon was really a beautiful place in which to be born . . . I recall many pleasant and happy youthful memories, especially of the banks of the Nenagh River, and anyone who cast a fly in the river would try Violet Bank, Ballyartilla and Minnit Bridge.’ His father, William Francis Conway, had married a Miss Mary Anne McCready, and both Conways and McCreadys had lived in the district for centuries. The Conways were of farming stock, while the McCreadys had been successful boot and shoe makers for nearly two hundred years. There is no record of any members of the families having special scientific interests, but members of both families had joined the priesthood, including an uncle of E. J. Conway, and one of his five brothers. William Francis Conway had left farming to become a draper in Nenagh, but some years later his wife inherited a small legacy from a relative who had established the highly successful McCready Shoe Corporation in the United States. Conway (Senr), at his son’s suggestion, then retired from business,, and the family moved to Sandymount, Dublin.