The maths teacher who escaped a death sentence and went on to lead Ireland
In May 1916 a British court martial sentenced a little-known mathematics teacher to death for his part in Dublin's Easter Rising. A general reviewing the case asked who he even was, and commuted it. That teacher, Eamon de Valera, later spent 21 years as Ireland's head of government.
His beginnings were murky. He arrived on 14 October 1882 at a Manhattan hospital for destitute and abandoned children, registered as George de Valero. His mother, Catherine Coll, came from Bruree in County Limerick; his father was described as a Spanish artist, yet archivists have never found any record of him. After his father's death, a two-year-old Eamon was sent to Ireland with an uncle and brought up by his grandmother in Bruree, even after his mother remarried in America.
A scholarship took him to Blackrock College in Dublin, where he was named student of the year and played rugby, a sport he loved all his life. He earned a mathematics degree in 1904 and taught the subject at several colleges, picking up the nickname Dev along the way. He also threw himself into reviving the Irish language, and through the Gaelic League met Sinead Flanagan, whom he married in 1910.
He joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and, during the Rising of April 1916, commanded the rebels holding Boland's Mill. Four factors are credited with keeping him alive: he surrendered late and was held apart from the other leaders, American diplomats questioned whether he was a US citizen, his security file was nearly empty, and by his trial on 8 May pressure to halt the executions was mounting. He reportedly passed the waiting time in prison working on maths problems.
He went on to found Fianna Fail in 1926, took over the government in 1932 and led the drafting of the 1937 constitution. From 1959 to 1973 he served two terms as president. His interest in science endured too: in 1940 he helped create the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and invited Erwin Schrodinger to join it.
Source: Éamon de Valera
