Talk 'Women and the RIA' written by Íde Ní Thuama, assistant librarian of the Royal Irish Academy, given to the Royal Society of Antiquities of Ireland in March 1988. A typescript copy is in the Academy. It describes the women associated with the Academy from its foundation in 1787, when Charlotte Brooke, daughter of Henry Brooke, poet and novelist, whose works she edited, applied for the post of housekeeper. Princess Daschkaw, director of the Imperial Academy of Arts and Sciences in St Petersburg, was the first woman to be elected an honorary member in 1791. Others include:
Caroline Lucretia Herschel, (1750-1848), sister of Sir William Herschel and an astronomer in her own right, Maria Edgeworth, who wrote to William Rowan Hamilton in 1838 suggesting that ladies might attend the meetings of the Academy and responded to his refusal 'You are certainly, as you have proved to me, physically and morally and intellectually better without the ladies...'. Hamilton put forward her name for election in 1842.

Among many other women named are:
Margaret Stokes, whose papers are deposited in the Academy library
Jane Stephens, born in Dublin in 1879, and appointed technical assistant in the Museum in 1905. Her work is on Irish jelly-fish, corals, sea-anemones and sponges.
Mary E. Byrne, Celtic scholar, who with Myles Dillon prepared an edition of Táin Bó Fraich in the 1930s Maud Joynt, died 1940, Old and Middle Irish and Welsh scholar, who worked on the Academy dictionary.

Several other female contributors to the dictionary are listed:
Ada Longfield, (Mrs Leask) historian, worked on 16th century Anglo-Irish trade c.1920s
Phyllis Clinch, died 1984, published on the biochemistry of conifers and lectured at University College, Dublin.
Sheila Power, (Mrs Sean Tinney) mathematician, studied under Schrodinger, made Professor of Mathematical Physics at University College, Dublin in 1966
The first proposal of a woman for membership came on 14 February 1910 and the members took advice from the Linnean Society and the Royal Society, and finally from a lawyer, who advised that 'it may safely be assumed that the admission of women was never contemplated'.
The Academy finally opened its doors to women members in 1949.

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