Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Molloy, Gerald
MOLLOY, GERALD (1834–1906), rector of the Catholic University of Dublin, born at Mount Tallant, near Dublin, on 10 Sept. 1834, was second son of Thomas Molloy by his wife Catharine, daughter of Patrick Whelan. He received his early education at Castleknock College, and thence passed to Maynooth College, the theological seminary of the Irish catholic priesthood. The capacity for sustained work which distinguished him through life carried him with such success through his college course that at its close in 1857, when only twenty-three years old, he was appointed professor of theology at Maynooth. But his bent was not for theology. With his professorial duties he combined a study of the natural sciences, for which he had special aptitudes. In 1870 he published, under the title 'Geology and Revelation,' a work which testified to his scientific gifts as well as to his acquirements as a theologian. In 1874 he resigned his chair in Maynooth (where he received the degree of D.D.) for the professorship of natural philosophy in the Catholic University, Dublin.
In 1878 he was appointed one of the two assistant commissioners for regulating intermediate education in Ireland according to the new Act of Parliament passed in that year. But after a few months he retired, and resumed his professorship at the Catholic University. Of this institution he became rector in 1883, but the title was then little more than honorary. The Royal University of Ireland had been established in 1879, and on its foundation the buildings of the Catholic University became merely a college in which the Dublin fellows of the new university lectured, and students were prepared for its degrees. Molloy was among the first senators of the Royal University, and was made D.Sc.; in 1882 he resigned the position of senator for a fellowship in the department of physical science, which he held till 1887. In 1885 the government named a commission to inquire into educational endowments in Ireland and to formulate improved schemes for their application. Of two paid commissioners Molloy was one. This appointment he held till the commission concluded its work in 1894. In 1890 he was reappointed a senator of the Royal University, and in 1903 became its vice-chancellor. As vice-chancellor he represented the Royal University at Aberdeen when in 1906 the university there celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of its foundation. During the festivities he died suddenly of heart failure on 1 Oct. 1906. He was buried in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin. A man of broad sympathies and genial manners, he was a favourite with every rank and section of Irish society.
Molloy's gifts did not lie in the direction of original research, but he had a singular power of lucid exposition, and a faculty to translate scientific knowledge into language comprehensible to the lay mind. His lectures in his own classroom, in the theatre of the Royal Dublin Society, and elsewhere, always attracted large audiences. His more notable works are, besides 'Geology and Revelation' (1870), 'Outlines of a Course of Natural Philosophy' (1880), 'Gleanings in Science' (1888). and 'The Irish Difficulty—Shall and Will' (1897).
[Freeman's Journal, and Irish Times, 2 Oct. 1906; Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Nov. 1906.]