Figures in a landscape
Paddy Heelan SJ, John Moore SJ, Jimmy Hurley SJ, and Hugh O’Neill SJ were among a group of Jesuits who celebrated together the golden jubilee of their ordination. Hugh O’Neill has been described as the Province’s liturgical mentor. John Moore SJ is emeritus professor of Botany in UCD, now teaching New Testament in Harare to young Zimbabwean Jesuits.
Paddy Heelan SJ has done post-graduate work in mathematics, maths-physics, geophysics, high-energy physics, and philosophy of science. He is linked with legendary names in science. Schrodinger taught him in Dublin. In Princeton he studied under Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigener, who occupied Einstein’s old office. His doctoral dissertation drew a letter of congratulations from Heisenberg, founder of Quantum Theory.
One of Paddy Heelan’s two hundred scholarly publications, a study of Quantum Theory and objectivity, featured in Oxford University’s history of science curriculum.
His present focus is on hermeneutic phenomenology, and he speaks of it in a memoir he published in the series: Lives of the Georgetown Jesuits.
Georgetown is the latest university, after UCD, St Louis, Princeton, Fordham, Leuven and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, to claim a share Paddy Heelan’s work. He and John Moore inherit a passion for the natural sciences like the Jesuit scientists Matteo Ricci and Ferdinand Verbiest, whose memory is venerated in Beijing, and who are currently featured in an exhibition at Oxford University entitled: Heaven on Earth (see the Tablet for 23 August, page 18).
