Clodagh Finn: Rename library after Trinity’s first female students

The first female graduates of Trinity College Dublin, in 1906, were: Back row, l-r: Lizzie Burkitt Craig (modern literature); Eileen Frances McCutchan (ethics and logic); Muriel Lora Bennett (modern literature); Bríghid Austin Stafford (modern literature), Front row, l-r: Anne Jane Sanderson (history and political science); Edith Marion O’Shaughnessy (modern literature); Eliza Beck Douglas (modern literature); Madeline Stuart Baker (medicine). Photo courtesy of the Board of Trinity College, The University of Dublin.

OH, the irony. George Salmon, mathematician, arch conservative and one-time provost of Trinity College Dublin, said that women would enter Ireland’s oldest university over his dead body.