The writer of The Ginger Man, JP Donleavy, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics Peter Higgs, will be among those awarded honorary degrees of the University of Dublin in a ceremony in Trinity this Friday. The degrees, awarded each year to no more than ten individuals, honour contributions to scholarship, society and culture.
The ceremony, which will take place in Trinity’s Public Theatre, also known as the Exam Hall, will see lawyer and civil activist Hina Jilani, novelist and campaigner Lia Mills, and Trinity’s oldest student, 97-year-old Josef Veselsky, also honoured with degrees.
Donleavy, who came to Dublin from New York in 1946, is an author, poet and playwright best known for his 1955 novel, The Ginger Man, which was loosely drawn from his experiences in Trinity as a science student in the late 1940s. The novel, which was banned in Ireland and the US on publication, is often cited as one of the best novels of the twentieth century.
Higgs, who is the former Professor of Physics in the University of Edinburgh, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2013 upon the discovery of the Higgs’ Boson by scientists working at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. The particle, theorised to exist by Higgs, is crucial our understanding of the origin of the mass of subatomic particles. Higgs, who has served on a review committee for the School of Theoretical Physics at Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, is a strong supporter of research currently ongoing within Trinity’s School of Mathematics, which overlaps with Higgs’s work on theoretical physics.
Last November, drag queen and gay rights activist Rory O’Neill, perhaps best known as Panti Bliss, received the honorary degree alongside University of Dublin Senator David Norris; Tomas Reichental, one of only three Holocaust survivors left in Ireland; and Fr Peter McVerry, founder of the Peter McVerry trust.
Also among this year’s recipients, Jilani is an advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, and has dedicated her life to fighting for human rights and democracy both in Pakistan and across the world. In 1980, she founded the Women’s Action Forum to campaign for women’s right and challenge discrimination in her native Pakistan, and 1986 helped develop the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. In 2013 Jilani was asked to join “The Elders”, a group of statesmen, peace activists and human rights advocates formed by Nelson Mandela, and is also a member of the Leadership Council of Front Line, the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders.
Other previous recipients of an honorary degree from Trinity include President Michael D Higgins, poet Paul Muldoon and former Ireland footballer Johnny Giles.
Mills, whose most recent novel, Fallen, was set during the Easter Rising and was selected as Dublin’s “One City One Book” choice for 2016, published a memoir in 2007, called In Your Face, describing her experience of advanced squamous cell carcinoma, which she was diagnosed with in 2006. After her recovery Mills joined with professionals and other cancer survivors to found Mouth, Head & Neck Cancer Awareness Ireland, which attempts to raise awareness of mouth cancer in Ireland. One of these professionals was Trinity’s Dr Denise MacCarthy, who with Mills edited a collection of stories and articles by patients and professionals called Word of Mouth: Coping With and Surviving Mouth, Head and Neck Cancers.
Originally from Czechoslovakia, since 2010 Veselsky has been taking courses in the Trinity’s School of Histories and Humanities. Veselsky’s elder brother and parents were killed in Auschwitz, and he himself fought in the resistance against the Nazis, for which he received the Order of the Slovak National Uprising. In 1948, he escaped the Prague coup and the rise of communism, and came to Ireland in 1949, where he established his own jewellery business. Continuing his passion for table-tennis in Ireland, he captained the Irish team for over twenty years, and in 2007 was made a Commander of the Slovak Order of the White Double Cross for outstanding achievement in sport and for his contribution to the development and maintenance of diplomatic relations between Slovakia and Ireland.
