How many people live in Ireland?

The population of Ireland is about 6.3 million, but it is estimated that 50 to 80 million people around the world have Irish forebears, making the Irish diaspora one of the largest of any nation. Historically, emigration from Ireland has been the result of conflict, famine and economic issues. People of Irish descent are found mainly in English-speaking countries, especially Great Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia. There are also significant numbers in Argentina, Mexico and New Zealand. The United States has the most people of Irish descent, while in Australia those of Irish descent are a higher percentage of the population than in any other country outside Ireland. Many Icelanders have Irish and Scottish Gaelic forebears.

Irish people

The Irish ( or "Na hÉireannaigh") are a Celtic nation and ethnic group native to the island of Ireland, who share a common Irish ancestry, identity and culture. Ireland has been inhabited for about 12,500 years according to archaeological studies (see Prehistoric Ireland). For most of Ireland's recorded history, the Irish have been primarily a Gaelic people (see Gaelic Ireland). Anglo-Normans conquered parts of Ireland in the 12th century, while England's 16th/17th-century (re)conquest and colonisation of Ireland brought a large number of English and Lowland Scots people to parts of the island, especially the north. Today, Ireland is made up of the Republic of Ireland (an independent state) and the smaller Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom). The people of Northern Ireland hold various national identities including British, Irish, Northern Irish or some combination thereof.

The Irish have their own customs, language, music, dance, sports, cuisine and mythology. Although Irish (Gaelic/Gaeilge) was their main language in the past, today most Irish people speak English as their first language. Historically, the Irish nation was made up of kin groups or clans, and the Irish also had their own religion, law code, alphabet and style of dress.

There have been many notable Irish people throughout history. After Ireland's conversion to Christianity, Irish missionaries and scholars exerted great influence on Western Europe, and the Irish came to be seen as a nation of "saints and scholars". The 6th-century Irish monk and missionary Columbanus is regarded as one of the "fathers of Europe", followed by saints Cillian and Fergal. The scientist Robert Boyle is considered the "father of chemistry", and Robert Mallet one of the "fathers of seismology". Famous Irish writers include Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw, Bram Stoker, James Joyce, C.S. Lewis and Seamus Heaney. Notable Irish explorers include Brendan the Navigator, Sir Robert McClure, Sir Alexander Armstrong, Sir Ernest Shackleton and Tom Crean. By some accounts, the first European child born in North America had Irish descent on both sides. Many presidents of the United States have had some Irish ancestry.

During the past 12,500 years of inhabitation, Ireland has witnessed some different peoples arrive on its shores. The ancient peoples of Ireland—such as the creators of the Céide Fields and Newgrange—are almost unknown. Neither their languages nor the terms they used to describe themselves have survived. As late as the middle centuries of the 1st millennium the inhabitants of Ireland did not appear to have a collective name for themselves.

Ireland itself was known by a number of different names, including Banba, Fódla, Ériu by the islanders, "Iouerne" and "Hiverne" to the Greeks, and Hibernia to the Romans.

Scotland takes its name from Scota, who in Irish mythology, Scottish mythology, and pseudohistory, is the name given to two different mythological daughters of two different Egyptian Pharaohs to whom the Gaels traced their ancestry, allegedly explaining the name Scoti, applied by the Romans to Irish raiders, and later to the Irish invaders of Argyll and Caledonia which became known as Scotland. Other Latin names for people from Ireland in Classic and Mediaeval sources include Attacotti and Gael. This last word, derived from the Welsh "gwyddel" "raiders", was eventually adopted by the Irish for themselves. However, as a term it is on a par with Viking, as it describes an activity (raiding, piracy) and its proponents, not their actual ethnic affiliations.

The terms "Irish" and "Ireland" are probably derived from the goddess Ériu. A variety of historical ethnic groups have inhabited the island, including the Airgialla, Fir Ol nEchmacht, Delbhna, Fir Bolg, Érainn, Eóganachta, Mairtine, Conmaicne, Soghain, and Ulaid. In the cases of the Conmaicne, Delbhna, and perhaps Érainn, it can be demonstrated that the tribe took their name from their chief deity, or in the case of the Ciannachta, Eóganachta, and possibly the Soghain, a deified ancestor. This practice is paralleled by the Anglo-Saxon dynasties' claims of descent from Woden, via his sons Wecta, Baeldaeg, Casere and Wihtlaeg.

The Greek mythographer Euhemerus originated the concept of Euhemerism, which treats mythological accounts as a reflection of actual historical events shaped by retelling and traditional mores. In the 12th century, Icelandic bard and historian Snorri Sturluson proposed that the Norse gods were originally historical war leaders and kings, who later became cult figures, eventually set into society as gods. This view is in agreement with Irish historians such as T. F. O'Rahilly and Francis John Byrne; the early chapters of their respective books, "Early Irish history and mythology" (reprinted 2004) and "Irish Kings and High-Kings" (3rd revised edition, 2001), deal in depth with the origins and status of many Irish ancestral deities.

One legend states that the Irish were descended from one Míl Espáine, whose sons supposedly conquered Ireland around 1000 BC or later. The character is almost certainly a mere personification of a supposed migration by a group or groups from Iberia to Ireland. It is from this that the Irish were, as late as the 1800s, popularly known as "Milesian". Medieval Irish historians, over the course of several centuries, created the genealogical dogma that all Irish were descendants of Míl, ignoring the fact that their own works demonstrated inhabitants in Ireland prior to his supposed arrival.

This doctrine was adapted between the 10th and 12th centuries, as demonstrated in the works of Eochaidh Ua Floinn (936–1004); Flann Mainistrech (died 25 November 1056); Tanaide (died c. 1075) and Gilla Cómáin mac Gilla Samthainde (fl. 1072). Many of their compositions were incorporated into the compendium Lebor Gabála Érenn.

This tradition was enhanced and embedded in the tradition by successive historians such as Dubsúilech Ó Maolconaire (died 1270); Seán Mór Ó Dubhagáin (d.1372); Giolla Íosa Mór Mac Fir Bhisigh (fl. 1390–1418); Pilip Ballach Ó Duibhgeannáin (fl. 1579–1590) and Flann Mac Aodhagáin (alive 1640). The first Irish historian who questioned the reliability of such accounts was Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh (murdered 1671).

Genetic research shows a strong similarity between the Y chromosome haplotypes of Irish men with Gaelic surnames and males from the area of Spain and Portugal, especially Galicia, Asturias, and Cantabria (and perhaps former Basque country). The incidence of the R1b haplogroup is 70% or more in Celtic regions – Cumbria and Cornwall in England, the Celtic Northern region in Portugal (Douro Litoral, Minho and Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro), northern Spain (Celtic Galicia, Asturias, León, Cantabria and Basque Country), western France (Béarn, Gascony, Guyenne, Saintonge, Angoumois, Aunis, Poitou, Touraine, Anjou and the Celtic Brittany), and Celtic Countries – Wales and Scotland in Britain. R1b's incidence declines gradually with distance from these areas but it is still common across the central areas of Europe. R1b is the most frequent haplogroup in Germany and in the Low Countries, and is common in southern Scandinavia and in northern and central Italy. This led writers, such as Stephen Oppenheimer and Bryan Sykes, to conclude that the majority of Irish people primarily descend from an "Iberian refugium" population bottleneck dating back to the last ice age.

However, this haplogroup is now believed by some to have originated over 12,000 years more recently than previously thought. It thus follows that Irish and many other R1b subclades would be considerably younger than the maximum age of 18,000 years. The previous estimates, based on inaccurate dating methods (30,000+ years BP), made R1b and its subclades seem to be more useful indicators of the paleolithic era populations of western Europe than they actually are. According to recent 2009 studies by Bramanti et al. and Malmström et al. on mtDNA, related western European populations appear to be largely from the neolithic and not paleolithic era, as previously thought. There was discontinuity between mesolithic central Europe and modern European populations mainly due to an extremely high frequency of haplogroup U (particularly U5) types in mesolithic central European sites.

The existence of an especially strong genetic association between the Irish and the Basques, one even closer than the relationship between other west Europeans, was first challenged in 2005, and in 2007 scientists began looking at the possibility of a more recent Mesolithic- or even Neolithic-era entrance of R1b into Europe. A new study published in 2010 by Balaresque et al. implies either a Mesolithic- or Neolithic- (not Paleolithic-) era entrance of R1b into Europe. However, all these genetic studies agree that the Irish and Basque (along with the Welsh) share the highest percentage of R1b populations.
A recent whole genome analysis of 1 neolithic and 3 Bronze Age skeletal remains in Ireland suggested that the original farming population was mostly similar to present-day Sardinians, and the 3 Bronze Age remains had a Steppe component to their genetics showing links with Eastern Europe. Most modern Irish share more DNA with the 3 Bronze Age men from Rathlin than with the earlier Ballynahatty neolithic woman.

A recent genetic study done on the Irish show that they have two main ancestral sources: a French component (mostly northwestern French) and West Norwegian from the Viking era.

Black Irish is an ambiguous term sometimes used (mainly outside Ireland) as a reference to a dark-haired phenotype appearing in people of Irish origin. However, dark hair in people of Irish descent is common, although darker skin complexions appear less frequently. One popular speculation suggests the Black Irish are descendants of survivors of the Spanish Armada, despite research discrediting such claims. Filmmaker Bob Quinn, in the documentary series "Atlantean", hypothesises the existence of an ancient sea-trading route linking North Africa and Iberia to regions such as Connemara. With this hypothesis, Quinn explains phenotypical similarities between the "Atlantean Irish" and the populations of Iberia and the Berbers. Quinn's Atlantean thesis has not been accepted by the Irish academic establishment, who have criticised it is as non-scholarly and lacking hard evidence to back his theories.

Afro-Caribbean people descended from Irish settlers in the Caribbean, especially those on Barbados and Montserrat, are referred to as "Black Irish". The people concerned often have Irish surnames, speak a form of Caribbean English influenced by the Irish vernacular and, in some cases, sing Irish songs.

One Roman historian records that the Irish people were divided into "sixteen different nations" or tribes. Traditional histories assert that the Romans never attempted to conquer Ireland, although it may have been considered. The Irish were not, however, cut off from Europe; they frequently raided the Roman territories, and also maintained trade links.

Among the most famous people of ancient Irish history are the High Kings of Ireland, such as Cormac mac Airt and Niall of the Nine Hostages, and the semi-legendary Fianna. The 20th-century writer Seumas MacManus wrote that even if the Fianna and the Fenian Cycle were purely fictional, it would still be representative of the character of the Irish people:

The introduction of Christianity to the Irish people during the 5th century brought a radical change to the Irish people's foreign relations. The only military raid abroad recorded after that century is a presumed invasion of Wales, which according to a Welsh manuscript may have taken place around the 7th century. In the words of Seumas MacManus:
Following the conversion of the Irish to Christianity, Irish secular laws and social institutions remained in place.

The 'traditional' view is that, in the 4th or 5th century, Gaelic language and culture was brought to Scotland by settlers from Ireland, who founded the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata on Scotland's west coast. This is based mostly on medieval writings from the 9th and 10th centuries. The archaeologist Ewan Campbell argues against this view, saying that there is no archeological or placename evidence for a migration or a takeover by a small group of elites. He states that "the Irish migration hypothesis seems to be a classic case of long-held historical beliefs influencing not only the interpretation of documentary sources themselves, but the subsequent invasion paradigm being accepted uncritically in the related disciplines of archaeology and linguistics." Dál Riata and the territory of the neighbouring Picts merged to form the Kingdom of Alba, and Gaelic language and culture became dominant there. The country came to be called "Scotland", after the Roman name for the Gaels: "Scoti". The Isle of Man and the Manx people also came under massive Gaelic influence in their history.

Irish missionaries such as Saint Columba brought Christianity to Pictish Scotland. The Irishmen of this time were also "aware of the cultural unity of Europe", and it was the 6th-century Irish monk Columbanus who is regarded as "one of the fathers of Europe". Another Irish saint, Aidan of Lindisfarne, has been proposed as a possible patron saint of the United Kingdom, while Saints Kilian and Vergilius became the patron saints of Würzburg in Germany and Salzburg in Austria, respectively.
Irish missionaries founded monasteries outside Ireland, such as Iona Abbey, the Abbey of St Gall in Switzerland, and Bobbio Abbey in Italy.

Common to both the monastic and the secular bardic schools were Irish and Latin. With Latin, the early Irish scholars "show almost a like familiarity that they do with their own Gaelic". There is evidence also that Hebrew and Greek were studied, the latter probably being taught at Iona.

Since the time of Charlemagne, Irish scholars had a considerable presence in the Frankish court, where they were renowned for their learning. The most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic period was the 9th century Johannes Scotus Eriugena, an outstanding philosopher in terms of originality. He was the earliest of the founders of scholasticism, the dominant school of medieval philosophy. He had considerable familiarity with the Greek language, and translated many works into Latin, affording access to the Cappadocian Fathers and the Greek theological tradition, previously almost unknown in the Latin West.

The influx of Viking raiders and traders in the 9th and 10th centuries resulted in the founding of many of Ireland's most important towns, including Cork, Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford (earlier Gaelic settlements on these sites did not approach the urban nature of the subsequent Norse trading ports). The Vikings left little impact on Ireland other than towns and certain words added to the Irish language, but many Irish taken as slaves inter-married with the Scandinavians, hence forming a close link with the Icelandic people. In the Icelandic "Laxdœla saga", for example, "even slaves are highborn, descended from the kings of Ireland." The first name of Njáll Þorgeirsson, the chief protagonist of "Njáls saga", is a variation of the Irish name Neil. According to "Eirik the Red's Saga", the first European couple to have a child born in North America was descended from the Viking Queen of Dublin, Aud the Deep-minded, and a Gaelic slave brought to Iceland.
The arrival of the Anglo-Normans brought also the Welsh, Flemish, Anglo-Saxons, and Bretons. Most of these were assimilated into Irish culture and polity by the 15th century, with the exception of some of the walled towns and the Pale areas. The Late Middle Ages also saw the settlement of Scottish gallowglass families of mixed Gaelic-Norse -Pict descent, mainly in the north; due to similarities of language and culture they too were assimilated.

The Irish were among the first people in Europe to use surnames as we know them today. It is very common for people of Gaelic origin to have the English versions of their surnames beginning with 'Ó' or 'Mac' (Over time however many have been shortened to 'O' or Mc). 'O' comes from the Gaelic Ó which in turn came from Ua, which means "grandson", or "descendant" of a named person. Mac is the Gaeilge for son.

Names that begin with "O'" include Ó Bánion (O'Banion), Ó Briain (O'Brien), Ó Cheallaigh (O'Kelly), Ó Conchobhair (O'Connor, O'Conor), Ó Chonaill (O'Connell), O'Coiligh (Cox), Ó Cuilinn (Cullen), Ó Domhnaill (O'Donnell), Ó hAnnracháin, (Hanrahan}, Ó Máille (O'Malley), Ó Mathghamhna (O'Mahony), Ó Néill (O'Neill), Ó Sé (O'Shea), Ó Súilleabháin (O'Sullivan), and Ó Tuathail (O'Toole).

Names that begin with Mac or Mc include Mac Cárthaigh (MacCarthy), Mac Diarmada (MacDermott), Mac Domhnaill (MacDonnell), and Mac Mathghamhna (MacMahon) Mag Uidhir (Maguire). Mac is commonly anglicised Mc. However, "Mac" and "Mc" are not mutually exclusive, so, for example, both "MacCarthy" and "McCarthy" are used. While both "Mac" and "Ó'" prefixes are Gaelic in origin, "Mac" is more common in Scotland and in Ulster than in the rest of Ireland; furthermore, "Ó" is far less common in Scotland than it is in Ireland. The proper surname for a woman in Irish uses the feminine prefix nic (meaning daughter) in place of mac. Thus a boy may be called Mac Domhnaill whereas his sister would be called Nic Dhomhnaill or Ní Dhomhnaill – the insertion of 'h' follows the female prefix in the case of most consonants (bar H, L, N, R, & T).

A son has the same surname as his father. A female's surname replaces Ó with Ní (reduced from Iníon Uí – "daughter of the grandson of") and Mac with Nic (reduced from Iníon Mhic – "daughter of the son of"); in both cases the following name undergoes lenition. However, if the second part of the surname begins with the letter C or G, it is not lenited after Nic. Thus the daughter of a man named Ó Maolagáin has the surname "Ní Mhaolagáin" and the daughter of a man named Mac Gearailt has the surname "Nic Gearailt". When anglicised, the name can remain O' or Mac, regardless of gender.

There are a number of Irish surnames derived from Norse personal names, including Mac Suibhne (Sweeney) from Swein and McAuliffe from "Olaf". The name Cotter, local to County Cork, derives from the Norse personal name Ottir. The name Reynolds is an Anglicization of the Gaelic Mac Raghnaill, itself originating from the Norse names Randal or Reginald. Though these names were of Viking derivation some of the families who bear them appear to have had Gaelic origins.

"Fitz" is an old Norman French variant of the Old French word "fils" (variant spellings filz, fiuz, fiz, etc.), used by the Normans, meaning "son". The Normans themselves were descendants of Vikings, who had settled in Normandy and thoroughly adopted the French language and culture. With the exception of the Gaelic-Irish Fitzpatrick (Mac Giolla Phádraig) surname, all names that begin with Fitz – including FitzGerald (Mac Gearailt), Fitzsimons (Mac Síomóin/Mac an Ridire) and FitzHenry (Mac Anraí) – are descended from the initial Norman settlers. A small number of Irish families of Gaelic origin came to use a Norman form of their original surname—so that Mac Giolla Phádraig became Fitzpatrick—while some assimilated so well that the Gaelic name was dropped in favor of a new, Hiberno-Norman form. Another common Irish surname of Norman Irish origin is the 'de' habitational prefix, meaning 'of' and originally signifying prestige and land ownership. Examples include de Búrca (Burke), de Brún, de Barra (Barry), de Stac (Stack), de Tiúit, de Faoite (White), de Londras (Landers), de Paor (Power). The Irish surname "Walsh" (in Gaelic "Breathnach") was routinely given to settlers of Welsh origin, who had come during and after the Norman invasion. The Joyce and Griffin/Griffith (Gruffydd) families are also of Welsh origin.

The Mac Lochlainn, Ó Maol Seachlainn, Ó Maol Seachnaill, Ó Conchobhair, Mac Loughlin and Mac Diarmada families, all distinct, are now all subsumed together as MacLoughlin. The full surname usually indicated which family was in question, something that has been diminished with the loss of prefixes such as Ó and Mac. Different branches of a family with the same surname sometimes used distinguishing epithets, which sometimes became surnames in their own right. Hence the chief of the clan Ó Cearnaigh (Kearney) was referred to as An Sionnach (Fox), which his descendants use to this day. Similar surnames are often found in Scotland for many reasons, such as the use of a common language and mass Irish migration to Scotland in the late 19th and early to mid-20th centuries.

The Irish people of the Late Middle Ages were active as traders on the European continent. They were distinguished from the English (who only used their own language or French) in that they only used Latin abroad—a language "spoken by all educated people throughout Gaeldom". According to the writer Seumas MacManus, the explorer Christopher Columbus visited Ireland to gather information about the lands to the west, a number of Irish names are recorded on Columbus' crew roster preserved in the archives of Madrid and it was an Irishman named Patrick Maguire who was the first to set foot in the Americas in 1492; however, according to Morison and Miss Gould, who made a detailed study of the crew list of 1492, no Irish or English sailors were involved in the voyage.

An English report of 1515 states that the Irish people were divided into over sixty Gaelic lordships and thirty Anglo-Irish lordships. The English term for these lordships was "nation" or "country". The Irish term ""oireacht"" referred to both the territory and the people ruled by the lord. Literally, it meant an "assembly", where the Brehons would hold their courts upon hills to arbitrate the matters of the lordship. Indeed, the Tudor lawyer John Davies described the Irish people with respect to their laws:

Another English commentator records that the assemblies were attended by "all the scum of the country"—the labouring population as well as the landowners. While the distinction between "free" and "unfree" elements of the Irish people was unreal in legal terms, it was a social and economic reality. Social mobility was usually downwards, due to social and economic pressures. The ruling clan's "expansion from the top downwards" was constantly displacing commoners and forcing them into the margins of society.

As a clan-based society, genealogy was all important. Ireland 'was justly styled a "Nation of Annalists"'. The various branches of Irish learning—including law, poetry, history and genealogy, and medicine—were associated with hereditary learned families. The poetic families included the Uí Dhálaigh (Daly) and the MacGrath. Irish physicians, such as the O'Briens in Munster or the MacCailim Mor in the Western Isles, were renowned in the courts of England, Spain, Portugal and the Low Countries. Learning was not exclusive to the hereditary learned families, however; one such example is Cathal Mac Manus, the 15th century diocesan priest who wrote the "Annals of Ulster". Other learned families included the Mic Aodhagáin and Clann Fhir Bhisigh. It was this latter family which produced Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh, the 17th century genealogist and compiler of the "Leabhar na nGenealach". (see also Irish medical families).

After Ireland was subdued by England, the English—under James I of England ( 1603–1625), the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell (1653–1658), William III of England ( 1689–1702) and their British successors—began the settling of Protestant Scottish and English colonists into Ireland, where they settled most heavily in the northern province of Ulster. The Plantations of Ireland, and in particular the Plantation of Ulster in the 17th century, introduced great numbers of Scottish, English as well as French Huguenots as colonists.

Many Gaelic Irish were displaced during the 17th century plantations. Only in the major part of Ulster did the plantations of mostly Scottish prove long-lived; the other three provinces (Connacht, Leinster, and Munster) remained heavily Gaelic Irish. Eventually, the Anglo-Irish and Protestant populations of those three provinces decreased drastically as a result of the political developments in the early 20th century in Ireland, as well as the Catholic Church's Ne Temere decree for mixed marriages, which obliged the non-Catholic partner to have the children raised as Catholics.

There have been notable Irish scientists. The Anglo-Irish scientist Robert Boyle (1627–1691) is considered the father of chemistry for his book "The Sceptical Chymist", written in 1661. Boyle was an atomist, and is best known for Boyle's Law. The hydrographer Rear Admiral Francis Beaufort (1774–1857), an Irish naval officer of Huguenot descent, was the creator of the Beaufort scale for indicating wind force. George Boole (1815–1864), the mathematician who invented Boolean algebra, spent the latter part of his life in Cork. The 19th century physicist George Stoney introduced the idea and the name of the electron. He was the uncle of another notable physicist, George FitzGerald.
The Irish bardic system, along with the Gaelic culture and learned classes, were upset by the plantations, and went into decline. Among the last of the true bardic poets were Brian Mac Giolla Phádraig (c. 1580–1652) and Dáibhí Ó Bruadair (1625–1698). The Irish poets of the late 17th and 18th centuries moved toward more modern dialects. Among the most prominent of this period were Séamas Dall Mac Cuarta, Peadar Ó Doirnín, Art Mac Cumhaigh, Cathal Buí Mac Giolla Ghunna, and Seán Clárach Mac Domhnaill. Irish Catholics continued to receive an education in secret "hedgeschools", in spite of the Penal laws. A knowledge of Latin was common among the poor Irish mountaineers in the 17th century, who spoke it on special occasions, while cattle were bought and sold in Greek in the mountain market-places of Kerry.

For a comparatively small population of about 6 million people, Ireland made an enormous contribution to literature. Irish literature encompasses the Irish and English languages. Notable Irish writers, playwrights and poets include Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, Oscar Wilde, Oliver Goldsmith, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, Bram Stoker, W.B Yeats, Séamus Heaney and Brendan Behan.

Known as An Górta Mór (The great hunger) in Gaeilge, millions of Irish people died and emigrated during Ireland's largest famine. The famine lasted from 1845 - 1849, it was worst during 1847 which was known as Black '47. The famine occurred due to the extremely impoverished Irish population's staple food the potato being infected with Blight. This meant the crop failed and turned black. Starving people who tried to eat them would only vomit it back up soon afterwards. Soup kitchens were set up but made little difference. The English government produced little aid, only sending raw corn known as 'Peel's Brimstone' to Ireland. It was known by this name after the British PM at the time and the fact that native Irish weren't aware on how to cook corn. This led to little or no improvement. The British government set up workhouses which were disease ridden (with cholera, TB and others) but they also failed as little food was available and many died on arrival as they were overworked. Some English political figures at the time saw the famine as a purge from God to exterminate the majority of the native Irish population.

Irish people emigrated to escape the famine journeying predominantly to the east coast of the US especially Boston and New York, Liverpool in England, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Many records show the majority of emigrants to Australia were in fact prisoners sent to assist in the construction of English colonies there. A substantial proportion of these committed crimes in hopes of being extradited to Australia, favouring it to the persecution and hardships they endured in their homeland. Emigrants travelled on 'Coffin Ships' they were called this as there were high mortality rates on board. Many died of disease or starved. Conditions on board were abysmal - tickets were expensive so stowaways were common, little food stuff was given to passengers who were simply viewed as cargo in the eyes of the ship workers. Famous coffin ships include the Jeanie Johnston and the Dunbrody.

There are many statues and memorials in Dublin, New York and other cities in memory of the famine. The fields of Athenry is a famous song about the great famine and is often sung at national team sporting events in memory and homage to those affected by the famine.

The Great famine is one of the biggest events in Irish history and is ingrained in the identity on the nation to this day. It was a major in factor in Irish Nationalism and Ireland's fight for Independence during subsequent rebellions. As many Irish people felt a stronger need to regain Independence from English rule.

After the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921) the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed which led to the formation of the semi-independent Irish Free State (now the independent Republic of Ireland) which consisted of 26 counties in the south and Donegal in the North-West. The remaining six counties in the northeast remained in the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland. It is predominately religion, historical, and political differences that divide the two communities of (nationalism and unionism). Four polls taken between 1989 and 1994 revealed that when asked to state their national identity, over 79% of Northern Irish Protestants replied "British" or "Ulster" with 3% or less replying "Irish", while over 60% of Northern Irish Catholics replied "Irish" with 13% or less replying "British" or "Ulster". A survey in 1999 showed that 72% of Northern Irish Protestants considered themselves "British" and 2% "Irish", with 68% of Northern Irish Catholics considering themselves "Irish" and 9% "British". The survey also revealed that 78% of Protestants and 48% of all respondents felt "Strongly British", while 77% of Catholics and 35% of all respondents felt "Strongly Irish". 51% of Protestants and 33% of all respondents felt "Not at all Irish", while 62% of Catholics and 28% of all respondents felt "Not at all British".

In the Republic of Ireland, as of 2011, 3,861,335 people or about 84.16% of the population are Roman Catholic. In Northern Ireland about 41.6% of the population are Protestant (19.1% Presbyterian, 13.7% Church of Ireland, 3.0% Methodist, 5.8% Other Christian) whilst approximately 40.8% are Catholic as of 2011.
The 31st International Eucharistic Congress was held in Dublin in 1932, that year being the supposed 1,500th anniversary of Saint Patrick's arrival. Ireland was then home to 3,171,697 Catholics, about a third of whom attended the Congress. It was noted in "Time Magazine" that the Congress' special theme would be "the Faith of the Irish". The massive crowds were repeated at Pope John Paul II's Mass in Phoenix Park in 1979. The idea of faith has affected the question of Irish identity even in relatively recent times, apparently more so for Catholics and Irish-Americans. Today the majority of Irish people in the Republic of Ireland identify as Catholic, although church attendance have significantly dropped in recent decades. In Northern Ireland, where almost 50% of the population is Protestant, there has also been a decline in attendances.

This has been a matter of concern over the last century for the followers of nationalist ideologists such as DP Moran.

Thomas Davis, a prominent Protestant Irish nationalist who founded the Young Ireland movement, identified the Irish as a Celtic nation. He estimated that ethnically, 5/6ths of the nation were either of Gaelic Irish-origin, descended from returned Scottish Gaels (including much of the Ulster Scots) and some Celtic Welsh (such as his own ancestors and those carrying surnames such as Walsh and Griffiths). As part of this he was a staunch supporter of the Irish language as the "national language". In regards to the Germanic minority in Ireland (of Norman and Anglo-Saxon origin) he believed that they could be assimilated into Irishness if they had a "willingness to be part of the Irish Nation".

The Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom joined the European Community in 1973, and Irish citizens became additionally Citizens of the European Union with the Maastricht Treaty signed in 1992. This brought a further question for the future of Irish identity; whether Ireland was "closer to Boston than to Berlin:"

The Irish diaspora consists of Irish emigrants and their descendants in countries such as the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and nations of the Caribbean such as Jamaica and Barbados. These countries all have large minorities of Irish descent, who in addition form the core of the Catholic Church in those countries.

Many famous and influential figures have claimed Irish ancestry such as Che Guvara, Walt Disney, Barack Obama, JFK, Muhammad Ali and "Maréchal" The 1st Duke of Magenta, the second President of the Third Republic.

Many Irish people were also transported to the island of Montserrat, to work as indentured servants, exiled prisoners or slaves. Unlike African chattel slaves, the majority of Irish labourers who were sent to Montserrat did so by personal choice although they were tricked into doing so by the promise of payment and land of which they did not receive. Some were exiled by the English Oliver Cromwell due to the large Irish population and their attempted rebellion on 17 March 1768. To this day, the Island celebrates St. Patrick's Day as a public holiday to commemorate the event. People of Irish descent also feature strongly in Latin America, especially in Argentina and important minorities in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. In 1995, President Mary Robinson reached out to the "70 million people worldwide who can claim Irish descent". Today the diaspora is believed to contain an estimated 80 million people.
There are also large Irish communities in some mainland European countries, notably in Spain, France and Germany. Between 1585 and 1818, over half a million Irish departed Ireland to serve in the wars on the Continent, in a constant emigration romantically styled the ""Flight of the Wild Geese"" and, before that, in the 'Flight of the Earls', just before the Plantation of Ulster. In the early years of the English Civil War, a French traveller remarked that the Irish "are better soldiers abroad than at home". Later, Irish brigades in France and Spain fought in the Wars of the Spanish and Austrian Succession and the Napoleonic Wars. In the words of Field Marshal The 1st Duke of Wellington, the Irish-born 'Iron Duke', a notable representative of the Irish military diaspora, "Ireland was an inexhaustible nursery for the finest soldiers".

The British Legion were units that fought under Simón Bolívar against Spain for the independence of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru. Venezuelans called them the Albion Legion. They were composed of over seven thousand volunteers, mainly Napoleonic War veterans from Great Britain and Ireland. Volunteers in the British Legion were motivated by a combination of both genuine political and mercenary motives.
The most famous cause of emigration was the Great Famine of the late 1840s. A million are thought to have emigrated to Liverpool as a result of the famine. For both the Irish in Ireland and those in the resulting diaspora, the famine entered folk memory and became a rallying point for various nationalist movements.
People of Irish descent are the second largest self-reported ethnic group in the United States, after German Americans. Nine of the signatories of the American Declaration of Independence were of Irish origin. Among them was the sole Catholic signatory, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, whose family were the descendants of Ely O'Carroll, an Irish prince who had suffered under Cromwell.
At least twenty-five presidents of the United States have some Irish ancestral origins, including George Washington. Since John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, every American President (with the exception of Gerald Ford and Donald Trump) has had some Irish blood. An Irish-American, James Hoban, was the designer of the White House. Commodore John Barry, who was born in County Wexford, was the father of the United States Navy.
In the mid-19th century, large numbers of Irish immigrants were conscripted into Irish regiments of the United States Army at the time of the Mexican–American War. The vast majority of the 4,811 Irish-born soldiers served in the U.S. Army, but some defected to the Mexican Army, primarily to escape mistreatment by Anglo-Protestant officers and the strong anti-Catholic discrimination in America. These were the "San Patricios", or Saint Patrick's Battalion—a group of Irish led by Galway-born John O'Riley, with some German, Scottish and American Catholics. They fought until their surrender at the decisive Battle of Churubusco, and were executed outside Mexico City by the American government on 13 September 1847. The battalion is commemorated in Mexico each year on 12 September.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, 300,000 free emigrants and 45,000 convicts left Ireland to settle in Australia. Today, Australians of Irish descent are one of the largest self-reported ethnic groups in Australia, after English and Australian. In the 2006 Census, 1,803,741 residents identified themselves as having Irish ancestry either alone or in combination with another ancestry. However this figure does not include Australians with an Irish background who chose to nominate themselves as 'Australian' or other ancestries. The Australian embassy in Dublin states that up to 30 percent of the population claim some degree of Irish ancestry.

It is believed that as many as 30,000 Irish people emigrated to Argentina between the 1830s and the 1890s. This was encouraged by the clergy, as they considered a Catholic country, Argentina, preferable to a Protestant United States. This flow of emigrants dropped sharply when assisted passage to Australia was introduced at which point the Argentine government responded with their own scheme and wrote to Irish bishops, seeking their support. However, there was little or no planning for the arrival of a large number of immigrants, no housing, no food. Many died, others made their way to the United States and other destinations, some returned to Ireland, a few remained and prospered. Thomas Croke Archbishop of Cashel, said: "I most solemnly conjure my poorer countrymen, as they value their happiness hereafter, never to set foot on the Argentine Republic however tempted to do so they may be by offers of a passage or an assurance of comfortable homes." Some famous Argentines of Irish descent include Che Guevara, former president Edelmiro Julián Farrell, and admiral William Brown. There are people of Irish descent all over South America, such as the Chilean liberator Bernardo O'Higgins and the Peruvian photographer Mario Testino. Although some Irish retained their surnames intact, others were assimilated into the Spanish vernacular. The last name "O'Brien", for example, became "Obregón".

People of Irish descent are also one of the largest self-reported ethnic groups in Canada, after English, French and Scottish Canadians. As of 2006, Irish Canadians number around 4,354,155.


When was Heinz Steinitz born?

Heinz Steinitz (April 26, 1909 – April 28, 1971, ) was a senior Israeli marine biologist and herpetologist, Professor and Chairman of the Department of zoology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He laid the foundation for research and teaching in marine biology and oceanography in Israel. In 1968 he founded the Marine Biology Laboratory of the Hebrew University near Eilat, serving as its first director. He also served as a founding member of the Zoological Society of Israel and a co-founder of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel.

Heinz Steinitz

Heinz Steinitz was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) on April 26, 1909, to Walter Steinitz (1882-1963), a cardiologist and zoologist, and Marta Schindler Steinitz (1885-1926). He grew up in Breslau and was greatly inspired by his father to study science and to be an active Zionist. He studied medicine from 1927-1933 in the universities of Breslau, Freiburg and Berlin. Although he passed the Medical Board examination in 1933, and would have started work in a hospital in Berlin and in the Jewish hospital in Breslau, he was prohibited from practicing by the Nazi regime which came to power that same year. Together with his wife Ruth Aber Steinitz (1907-1995), a medical student as well, he left Germany in 1933 and immigrated to Palestine.

Three sons were born to Heinz Steinitz and Dr. Ruth Steinitz. Each turned to sciences: Raphael Steinitz, an astrophysicist, is a Professor Emeritus at the Department of Physics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be’er Sheba; Gideon Steinitz, a senior geologist, was the former Head of the Geological Survey of Israel, Jerusalem; and Benjamin Steinitz, a plant scientist retired as a senior research scientist in the fields of plant physiology and horticulture at the Institute of Plant Sciences, Agricultural Research Organization, The Volcani Center, Rishon LeZion.

Heinz Steinitz died suddenly from a stroke in April 28, 1971, while being fully active in all positions he held at that time.

Unable to get in 1933 a permit from the British administration in Palestine to practice as a physician, Heinz Steinitz turned to earn his living in an agricultural research station located in Rehovot (and later in Petah Tikva). That work marked the moment he changed his path from medicine to zoology. His research on the control of citrus pests, under the supervision of Prof. F. S. Bodenheimer, eventually became the experimental basis for his doctoral thesis. In 1938, Steinitz was the first to obtain a Ph.D. degree in zoology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and he took his place in the founders and pioneers of zoology in Israel.

He became a member of the teaching and research staff of the Department of Zoology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1936, advanced along the academic track up to the highest degree of full professor, and worked in the department until his death. The Hebrew University, the first university in Israel, was established only a decade before Steinitz's arrival in Jerusalem; thus, his academic career parallels the early history of zoology research and teaching in the Israeli academia.

In the first decade of his career, including the years of World War II, he acted in the department as a teaching and research assistant, and concurrently, during 1943-1946, he lectured zoology at the Kibbutzim College of Education.

Appointed lecturer in 1946, he instructed animal histology, anatomy of livestock animals and laboratory animals. During the Arab-Israeli War (1948-1949) he served in a preventive healthcare military unit, teaching medical students recruited to army service.
As a consequence of that war, the campus of the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus became an enclave in the Jordanian kingdom, disconnected from the western part of a divided Jerusalem. The university relocated its faculties to west Jerusalem. The zoology department, excluded from the new Givat Ram campus constructed in the 1950s, resided in buildings on different sites in the western city. Steinitz was active in reorganizing the department's function under the new circumstances and took care of the zoological collections moved from Mount Scopus to west Jerusalem. His office and labs migrated over the years. At first they were in the Terra Sancta building in Rehavia, then in the St. Antonio Monastery building, across from the official residence of the President of Israel, and finally close to the Russian Compound in the center of west Jerusalem.
In 1951 Steinitz went to the USA for two years as a research fellow at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, where he conducted research in the field of experimental embryology. By 1954 he was promoted to Assistant Professor, became Associate Professor in 1957, and was appointed in 1963 Chairman of Division A of the Department of Zoology in Jerusalem. He lectured in general zoology, vertebrates and invertebrates morphology, animal histology, experimental embryology and ecology. From the mid-1950s onwards, marine biology and marine ecology became core of his research interests. He was the first to teach marine biology, and by 1966 he headed the development of the marine biology curriculum and research programs. In 1968, being Chairman of the Department of Zoology, he was appointed Full Professor.

Steinitz supervised masters and doctoral students, some of whom became senior scientists in fields of biology and environmental sciences in universities, research institutes, colleges and teacher colleges around the country. He believed in the importance of teaching and education at all levels, including preparing students to be school teachers. In this context, in the years 1957-1960 he was board member of the School of Education of the Hebrew University.

Heinz Steinitz was an ichthyologist, herpetologist, and marine biologist. He researched the ecology, distribution and evolution of amphibians and fresh water fish in the Middle East; the ecology, distribution and taxonomy of fish in the Red Sea; the ecology of the southeast Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Other research interests included experimental embryology, neurohistology, and anatomical microscopy of the amphibian eye. Geographically, his studies were conducted along the Syrian-African Great Rift valley, from Lake Hula and Lake Kinneret (The Sea of Galilee) in the north of Israel, through the Dead Sea in the center of the country, down to the Gulf of Eilat and the Red Sea in the south. Other parts of his work were carried out in the south east Mediterranean Basin and along the coasts of the Sinai Peninsula. His research concerned taxonomy, anatomy, zoogeographic distribution and ecology of the fauna investigated.

Together with his colleague Dr. Heinrich Mendelssohn, then at the Biological-Pedagogical Institute and later Professor at the Department of Zoology at Tel Aviv University, he explored the fauna of Lake Hula and its surrounding swamps. In 1940, the two researchers discovered the rare Hula painted frog ("Latonia nigriventer"), the only living member of the genus Latonia, an amphibian endemic to the Hula marshes. Lake Hula and its marshland were drained in the 1950s. The frog, considered to be extinct for about half a century due to the destruction of its habitat, was rediscovered in 2011. It is considered a living fossil, and it is included in the list of endangered species. Steinitz also explored fish species living in the unique ecological niche of Ein Feshkha. This site — the deepest continental point on Earth — is a saline wetland in the desert, on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, nourished by a spring of brackish water. Fish in this special habitat evolved isolated from fish populating other habitats.
On a first study of the southeast Mediterranean Basin, published in 1947 jointly with Prof. Georg Haas, they observed fish of Indo-Pacific origin. Later, Steinitz published dozens of papers on fish, the fauna and the ecology of the southeast Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. In 1967, together with Dr. William Aron from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, Steinitz launched a joint program on the role of the Suez Canal as a waterway for the passage of marine species between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.
After Steinitz's death in 1971, the survey and monitoring of the invasion of biota from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea (and to a smaller extent biota migration in the opposite direction) proliferated, and it continues into the 21st century. The phenomenon of the continuous flow of marine biota across the Suez Canal is termed Lessepsian migration. To this day, hundreds species native to the Red Sea have been identified in the Mediterranean Sea, and probably others are yet unidentified. This human-mediated invasion has significantly impacted the Mediterranean ecosystem and endangered many local and endemic Mediterranean species.

Steinitz carried out research on a number of fish families, among them the Blenniidae, Cichlidae and Cyprinodontidae. He published nearly sixty papers in his different research fields, including on the discovery of fish new to science like the Kinneret-Sardine "Acanthobrama terraesanctae", "Garra Barreimiae" (together with Henry Weed Fowler), and "Tristramella sacra intermedia" (together with A. Ben-Tuvia). Some of his publications appeared in special platforms he initiated and edited like the "Contributions to the Knowledge of the Red Sea", "Israel South Red Sea Expedition Scientific Reports", and "Contributions to the Knowledge of Lake Tiberias". Together with Otto Haim Oren he published a "Regional Bibliography of the Mediterranean coast of Israel and the adjacent Levant countries" and "Bibliography on Lake Kinnereth (Lake Tiberias)".

Parallel to research and teaching at the university, Steinitz was involved in three types of research-supporting long term pursuits: (a) Participation, organization and management of scientific expeditions; (b) building-up and curation of a fish collection; (c) planning, founding and managing a marine research station near Eilat.

In his earliest expeditions, in 1938-1940, Steinitz explored the fauna of Lake Hula and its surrounding marshland. Immediately following the outbreak of the Suez Crisis of 1956, Steinitz organized and headed an expedition examining the marine fauna along the Red Sea coasts of the Sinai Peninsula and the Suez Canal. In 1962 he led the first Israeli South Red Sea Expedition (ISRSE) which was based on the islands of the Dahlak Archipelago of Eritrea. The ISRSE was part of the first International Indian Ocean Expedition (IIOE) from 1962-1965. It was an interdisciplinary marine sciences research effort to survey the south Red Sea and to collect biological specimens and data from the region. Otto Haim Oren from the Haifa Sea Fishery Research Station and Lev Fishelson from the Tel Aviv University, both at that time doctoral students of Steinitz, assisted in organizing the project. The expedition team included a crew of researchers from universities and research institutes in Israel, as well as scientists from the Netherlands, USA and Ethiopia.

The fish collection of the Hebrew University was begun in the 1920s by Prof. Israel Aharoni and Prof. Georg Haas, soon after the opening of the Department of Zoology. Steinitz added specimens from the very beginning of his work in the department. During the 1950s, the collection of fish specimens was carried out also by Prof. Adam Ben-Tuvia from the Sea Fishery Research Station in Haifa, a former student of Steinitz. A considerable augmentation of the collection occurred with the harvest of the expeditions to Sinai in 1956 and the Israeli South Red Sea Expeditions in the 1960s, when over 3,000 lots of fish were deposited. The taxonomic and zoogeographic identification of specimens was often conducted by correspondence between Steinitz and ichthyologists and curators of research institutes and science museums around the world. As a consequence, the collection became recognized as having major international importance, serving as a reference collection for the international community of ichthyologists.

The formative years of Steinitz's career took place under the difficult conditions prevailing in any budding university, compounded with the instability of the wars which accompanied the resurrection of the state of Israel. Steinitz pursued connections and collaborations with the international community of scientists in order to ensure that research in Israel met the highest standards—a goal of critical importance for himself, the university, and the country. Furthermore, he realized that connections with colleagues from foreign countries would diminish the limits and disadvantages inherent in working in a small local scientific community geographically removed from global science centers. The wide and branched connections he wove over many years with scientists worldwide helped him to form a sound basis for what was, at that time, the early days of marine biology, oceanography, and ichthyology in Israel.

A special facet of Steinitz's international activities was building-up contacts and collaborations with West Germany's scientists, institutions and organizations. He commenced doing so years prior to the establishment, in 1965, of diplomatic relations between Germany and Israel. In 1946, working on the fish collection, he exchanged information and biological material with the German zoologist and geneticist Curt Kosswig. Prof. Kusswig emigrated in 1937 from Nazi Germany to Turkey, where he established the Department of Zoology at the Istanbul University. He returned to West Germany in 1955, was appointed head of the Zoological Institute and the Zoological Museum of the University of Hamburg, and visited Steinitz at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From the early 1960s Steinitz was invited several times to visit as a guest professor at the University of Hamburg and other German universities. He also visited and tied connections with museums of science, zoological museums and marine biology research stations in West Germany. He became acquainted with Dr. Günther Böhnecke, an oceanographer who played a central role after World War II in rehabilitating Germany's scientific relationships with countries worldwide. Dr. Böhnecke was an advisor to the German Research Foundation, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), in the field of oceanography. The personal acquaintance and mutual appreciation between Steinitz and Böhnecke led to the support by the DFG for building and operating a marine biology laboratory near Eilat.

Doctor Walter Steinitz, father of Heinz Steinitz, published in 1919 his vision and proposal to establish a marine biology research station on the Mediterranean coast of Palestine. The Hebrew University, and scholars in Palestine and in other countries, supported the plans of the project, but attempts to raise funds for it failed. Inspired by his father's vision, Heinz Steinitz resumed the effort to carry out the concept. However, he decided in the 1950s that the station would be better situated if it were built on the coast of the Red Sea, in the Gulf of Eilat (Gulf of Aqaba). He had three reasons for this preferred location: (a) Being by that time knowledgeable about the marine life in both the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, Heinz Steinitz recognized the higher richness and the notable biodiversity of the latter, which still remained widely uninvestigated. (b) First reports about the presence of fishes of Indo-Pacific origin in the eastern Mediterranean Sea began to appear in the beginning of the twentieth century. Indo-Pacific fishes were also observed along the coast of Palestine for the first time by Walter Steinitz. The findings were indicative for intrusion of alien fishes into the eastern Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal that was constructed and opened only several decades prior to those first observations. Heinz Steinitz believed that a research base in the Golf of Eilat would be best placed to conduct investigations into the phenomenon of migration of marine biota from the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea (a northern branch of the Indian Ocean) through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean Sea. Furthermore, a marine station in the Gulf of Eilat would facilitate analysis of the environmental and ecological changes resulting from man-made connection between the two global water bodies. (c) Polluting spills from the cities of Eilat and Aqaba into the Gulf waters, and pollutants discharged by ships and oil tankers that traffic along the Red Sea and cross the Suez Canal, constituted environmental perils. The marine research station staff in Eilat would be able to monitor impacts of anthropogenic activities on ecological processes and on the very sensitive marine ecosystems of the region.

In preparation for the construction of the marine research station, Steinitz visited during the 1950s and the 1960s dozens of oceanographic research stations and marine aquariums in Europe, the USA and in the Caribbean Islands in order to learn from other's experience managing such facilities. Since the Gulf of Eilat is in the geographical periphery of Israel and remote from any academic center, and considering that the Israeli nucleus of marine biologists was at that time still very small, Steinitz developed relationships with colleagues abroad and convinced them to come and conduct some of their research in the planned station. He also reinforced the local station's research and management staff with an international scientific advisory board of oceanographers from Europe, Australia and the USA in order to strengthen and sustain the nascent activity. In this way he guaranteed that the laboratory, from its inception, would be run at levels meeting international standards.

Steinitz received support and collaboration for his initiative from colleagues at other Israeli universities and research institutions, from the Israel Oceanographic and Limnology Research (IOLR) and from the German Research Foundation (DFG). The vision of Walter Steinitz was ultimately realized in 1968, five years after he died, when the Marine Biology Laboratory (MBL) of The Hebrew University near Eilat was inaugurated. Launching the laboratory was a peak in the career of Heinz Steinitz as an Israeli zoologist and as an internationally recognized senior marine biologist. He died in 1971 while being the first director of the laboratory; in his honor, the laboratory was renamed The Heinz Steinitz Marine Biology Laboratory.

The scientific activity in the station gained momentum soon after its inception, and under the leadership of its successive directors the research spread from marine biology to a wide scope of additional disciplines including chemical and physical oceanography, marine ecology and environmental quality. Supplemental buildings, new laboratories, teaching spaces and lecture halls were constructed. Israel's Council for Higher Education decided in 1985 that the station would become an interuniversity institute, with the marine biology laboratory being an integral part of it. The Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences (IUI) near Eilat became a national facility shared by all universities in Israel, The Weizmann Institute of Science and The Technion (Israel Institute of Technology).

Heinz Steinitz was active in ex-university professional forums and organizations, some of them of national importance.

Jointly with Prof. Georg Haas and Dr. O. Hecht, he founded in 1936 the Zoological Society of Israel.
In the 1940s plans were advanced to drain Lake Hula and its swamps. Being concerned about the potential ecological detrimental consequences, Steinitz opposed these plans. After the establishment of the state of Israel (1948), with the fast growing population, settling the country, and the rapidly growing economy, he became troubled about carelessness lack of attention to the value of nature, the danger of loss of wild fauna and flora, and the destruction of local natural resources. In 1953, together with Azaria Alon, Prof. Heinrich Mendelssohn, Prof. Amotz Zahavi, and others, he co-founded the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), a non-profit environmental organization working to preserve plants, animals, open spaces, and natural environments that represent biodiversity.

Steinitz was appointed to a number of governmental forums and assigned to national tasks by different Ministries:
Lake Kinneret is the largest aboveground freshwater reservoir in Israel. The lake is fed mainly by the Jordan River down-flowing from Lake Hula and the Hula valley. Two development projects in the 1950s profoundly impacted the ecosystem of Lake Kinneret: (i) Lake Hula and its marshland were drained and dried, and the soil revealed was converted to farmland. Consequently, the mineral salts composition of the water entering into Lake Kinneret was altered significantly. (ii) A water carrier was constructed and great amounts of drinking water began to be pumped and conducted from Lake Kinneret to central and south Israel. Science-based sustainable management of the lake's water quantity and quality, including understanding of the lake's biota as part of its ecosystem, became necessary. Steinitz chaired a joint committee of Mekorot (the national water company of Israel and the country's top agency for water management) and Tahal (TAHAL Group, the major provider of infrastructure development water projects), coordinating multidisciplinary investigation of Lake Kinneret. In parallel, The Kinneret Limnological Laboratory as part of Israel Oceanographic Limnological Research was founded in 1968. Ensuing research of the physical, chemical, biological and environmental components of the lake's ecosystem continuously supports intelligent management of this important national freshwater resource.

In 1965 Steinitz became member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and of the Academy's committee publishing the "Fauna of Israel".
He was co-editor of the "Bulletin of the Sea Fisheries Research Station in Haifa", and a board member of "Bamidge", the journal of Israel's fishery research and development.

The national and international reputation of Heinz Steinitz is reflected by names in his honor given to more than twenty newly discovered fishes, marine organisms and amphibians, listed in the Biographical Etymology of Marine Organism Names. Some names were given years after he passed away.
The fish species "Tylognathus steinitziorum" (discovered and named by Dr. Curt Kosswig in 1950, now called Hemigrammocapoeta nana) was dedicated to Walter Steinitz and his son Heinz Steinitz.

Animal species named after Heinz Steinitz include "Aphanogmus steinitzi" (Priesner, 1936); "Albunea steinitzi" (Holthuis, 1958) (Lipke Holthuis); "Elasmopus steinitzi" (Ruffo, 1959); "Typhlocirolana steinitzi" (Strouhal, 1961); "Bohadschia steinitzi" (Cherbonnier, 1963); "Pseudocyclops steinitzi" (Por, 1968); "Hydroides steinitzi" (Ben-Eliahu, 1972); "Istiblennius steinitzi" (Lotan, 1969) (synonym of "Istiblennius flaviumbrinus" (Rüppell, 1830)); "Scorpaenodes steinitzi" (Klausewitz & Fröiland, 1970) (Wolfgang Klausewitz); "Gammogobius steinitzi" (Bath, 1971); "Photoblepharon steinitzi" (Abe & Haneda, 1973); "Amblyeleotris steinitzi" (Klausewitz, 1974); "Omobranchus steinitzi" (Springer & Gomon, 1975); "Cocotropus steinitzi" (Eschmeyer & Dor, 1978); "Helcogramma steinitzi" (Clark, 1980) (Eugenie Clark); "Rubratella steinitzi" (Pawlowski & Lee, 1991); "Hyla heinzsteinitzi" (Hebrew: אילנית היינץ-שטייניץ) a synonym of "H. japonica" that has been apparently introduced into Israel.

Heinz Steinitz

His three sons were born, grew up and studied in Germany before they emigrated to Palestine. He inspired them to study sciences: Ernst Steinitz (1907-1980), was an internist in the private sector; Heinz Steinitz (1909-1971) was a professor of zoology and marine biology in the Department of Zoology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and Gideon Steinitz (1911-1975) was a mathematician in his academic education, became a meteorologist in Palestine and eventually was head of the Israel Meteorology Service.

Walter Steinitz

Walter Steinitz () (12 February 1882 – 14 December 1963) was a German-born Israeli cardiologist, zoologist, and fisheries research pioneer in Israel.

Walter Steinitz was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) in 1882. He was the son of Sigismund Steinitz (1845-1889), a merchant, and Augustin Cohn Steinitz (1850-1906); brother of the mathematician Ernst Steinitz (1871–1928); and also brother of the lawyer Kurt Steinitz (1872-1929).

He studied medicine in the Universities of Breslau and Rostock, Germany, and obtained his medical doctoral degree (M.D.) from the University of Rostock in 1905. Following his return to Breslau he earned his living as a cardiologist, and at the same time he also studied zoology. These studies were interrupted temporarily during World War I by service as a physician in the German army. After the war, being interested especially in marine organisms, he wrote a doctoral thesis on the development of the eye in the humpback whale and obtained a Ph.D. degree from the University of Breslau (now University of Wroclaw) in 1918. In recognition of his first and leading research of the marine fauna of the Eastern Mediterranean Basin, the Breslau University granted him a position as Privatdozent and lecturer in zoology.

Walter Steinitz’s first wife, Marta Schindler (1887-1924), was mother of his three sons. After he became a widower he married Alma Friedlander (1887-1977).

The rise at the beginning of 1933 of the Nazi regime brought an end to both his medical and academic career. He immediately recognized there was no future for a reasonable life as a Jew in Germany. Consequently, he emigrated that same year, together with his wife Alma, to Palestine. He joined a group of Jewish German-born settlers who together founded in 1933 Ramot HaShavim, a village organized as an agricultural commune. For five years (1933-1938) he was member of the leading committee of the village. In 1939 he chaired the committee for less than a year. He was a highly educated person, a polymath with wide interests in the fields of life sciences, geology, philosophy and music. With his skills and experience as teacher, he led courses and gave lectures in the village on biological and agricultural topics relevant to farmers, and contributed to the cultural life of the village. Until his death in 1963, he made his living in Ramot HaShavim from a chicken farm, where he attempted to improve egg production by poultry breeding. After his death in Bad Nauheim, Germany, he was buried in Ramot HaShavim.

Walter Steinitz was a committed Zionist who developed his unique way of combining scientific pursuit with Zionistic activism. He participated the Zionist Congresses in Basel in 1903 and in London (1920); attended the inauguration ceremony of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1925; chose the coast of Palestine and the eastern Mediterranean Sea as the zoogeographic research area he would study while still being affiliated to the Breslau University; and formulated plans for the establishment of a marine research station in Palestine nearly fifteen years prior his decision to move and live in that country. Finally, once he decided to leave Germany, his preference to emigrate to Palestine, and not elsewhere in Europe or America, certainly stemmed from his Zionist convictions.

Steinitz traveled to Palestine for zoological excursions in the second and third decades of the twentieth century. He explored, documented and analyzed his findings of fishes of the Eastern Mediterranean Basin, commenced scientific collections of fishes, and was the first to publish a comprehensive fisheries research of Palestine. His investigations were pioneering in two scientific respects: First, he discovered new marine organisms in the region, and second, he found fishes of Indo-Pacific origin along the coast of Palestine. The Suez Canal, a man-made connection between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, was opened only a few decades prior to his investigations in Palestine. The presence of Indo-Pacific species along the Mediterranean coast of Palestine revealed to Steinitz an influx of fishes from the Red Sea - a northern branch of the Indian Ocean - into the east Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal waterway, and it suggested that changes had occurred in the marine life of the south east Mediterranean Sea due to human intervention. He argued that with the new situation “…it is the only place on earth where two quite different zoological marine provinces have come into direct touch with one another” and that the Canal “…connects two oceans having each different fauna from the other”. Steinitz was among the first to call for monitoring the impact of the opening of the Suez Canal on the Levant biota. Studies of the invasions of Red Sea species into the Mediterranean Sea, and their ecological consequences for the Mediterranean marine biota, have proliferated since then and are ongoing in the twenty first century. The phenomenon of migration of marine species form the Red Sea through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean Sea is now termed Lessepsian migration.

As early as 1919 Steinitz published his vision to establish a marine biology research station on the coast of Palestine. He was convinced that a research station located in Palestine would be essential for researching and following changes occurring in the marine biota of the Levant. An exchange of letters on the topic with Prof. Albert Einstein during the period 1919-1937 represent Steinitz’s persistent efforts to raise funds and support for the endeavor. Soon after immigration to Palestine he submitted in 1933 to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem an elaborate proposal for the establishment in Tel Aviv of a biological marine station and aquarium for the study of the Mediterranean marine fauna and as a center for lectures and teaching courses. He received support from the biochemist and Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, and from Tel Aviv’s mayor Israel Rokach. As a result, the Aquarium and Marine Station Tel-Aviv Society Ltd was founded in 1936. Among the group’s founders were the mayor of Tel Aviv, Israel Rokach; Dr. Felix Danziger; Prof. Alfred Klopstock and other scholars. Albert Einstein was Honorary President and Walter Steinitz was the scientific director. The station was supposed to be built on land allocated by the Tel Aviv municipality, on the shore near the Yarkon estuary. The plan included construction of an aquarium, research rooms, a lecture hall and a library, all for the use of local researchers and guests from the international scientific community. The society’s agenda encompassed basic marine biology research of the eastern Mediterranean Sea, research to support fishing as a source of income, and exhibitions of marine animals to the public in the aquarium. The efforts to build the station in Tel Aviv were blocked when World War II broke out. Walter Steinitz made a final, brief and unsuccessful attempt to operate in 1939 a sea laboratory in Nahariya. His dream was ultimately fulfilled three decades later by his son Heinz Steinitz. A marine biology laboratory was inaugurated in 1968 on the coast of the Red Sea, in Eilat, the Gulf of Aqaba, and it is named The Heinz Steinitz Marine Biology Laboratory, in memory of its founder and first director. The laboratory became the basic element in the subsequent development of The Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences near Eilat.

The sea anemone "Cribrina steinitzi" Pax 1925 was named after Walter Steinitz, while the fish species "Tylognathus steinitziorum" Kosswig (synonym of "Hemigrammocapoeta nana" Heckel 1843, discovered and named by Dr. Curt Kosswig in 1950), was dedicated to Walter Steinitz and his son Heinz Steinitz.


How did Kim Hong-il die?

The death of Kim Jong-il was reported by North Korean state television news on 19 December 2011. The presenter Ri Chun-hee announced that he had died on 17 December at 8:30 am of a massive heart attack while travelling by train to an area outside Pyongyang. Reportedly, he had received medical treatment for cardiac and cerebrovascular diseases. During the trip though, he was said to have had an advanced acute myocardial infarction, complicated with a serious heart shock. However, it was reported by South Korean media in December 2012 that he had died in a fit of rage over construction faults at a crucial power plant project.

Death and state funeral of Kim Jong-il

His son Kim Jong-un was announced as North Korea's next leader with the title of "The Great Successor" during the same newscast. Jong-il's funeral was held on 28 December in Pyongyang, with a mourning period lasting until the following day.

North Korean State media did not report Jong-il's death until 51 hours after it occurred, apparently due to the political jockeying and discussions that surrounded the official version of Jong-il's legacy, as well as agreeing upon the membership of the Funeral Committee of Kim Jong-il. On the morning of 19 December, all work units, schools, government agencies, and military personnel were informed of a major announcement to take place at noon. At noon, Ri Chun-hee, a Korean Central Television news anchor, clad in full black traditional Korean clothing, announced the death of Kim Jong-il. Ri had previously announced the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994. During the announcement, a portrait of a smiling, idealized image of Kim Jong-il was released, continuing the tradition of displaying official posthumous portraits of supreme leaders of North Korea after their death.

Following the official notice, a male news anchor wearing a suit and black tie proceeded to announce the entire funeral committee of Kim Jong-il in order of the rankings established by the authorities. The committee had 233 names; Kim Jong-un was ranked first.

However, it was reported in December 2012 by South Korean media that he had died in a fit of rage over construction faults in a crucial power plant project at Huichon in Jagang Province.

The head of South Korea's National Intelligence Service said surveillance footage revealed that Kim's personal train, on which he is said to have died, did not move over the weekend. This implied that the train was stationary when North Korean authorities claimed he had died. According to editors of "The Chosun Ilbo" newspaper, reported circumstances surrounding Kim's death were inconsistent with what would be generally expected during official business trips: specifically, inclement weather conditions were present, and the time of day when Kim was supposedly travelling conflicted with his usual circadian rhythm; also, a low number of witnesses observed the events.

Korean Central News Agency announced the news, stating on 19 December:

Images showed that in the streets of Pyongyang, many people wept over Kim's death. People could be seen gathering to pay their respects, some kneeling, some wailing, and some beating the ground with their fists.

The BBC reported that the Korean Central News Agency said people were convulsing with pain and despair at their loss, but would unite behind his successor Kim Jong-un. They said that all party members, military men, and the public should faithfully follow the leadership of comrade Jong-un and protect and further strengthen the unified front of the party, military, and the public.

Workplaces and local government offices have organised meetings to create a proper atmosphere of mourning. People's Units have emphasised the Last Instructions of Kim Jong-il and groups from schools and workplaces have been visiting statues of Kim Il-sung and other major memorials to pay their respects.

After the death was announced, the South Korean military was put on high alert. The South's National Security Council, worried that political jockeying in North Korea could destabilise the region, also convened for an emergency meeting. President Lee Myung-bak cancelled the rest of his Monday schedule and in a statement, declared, "[f]or the sake of the future of the Republic of Korea, peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula is more important than anything else. It should not be threatened by what has happened. We must make thorough preparations to maintain peace and stability and continue to work closely with the international community... All citizens are asked to go about their lives without wavering so that peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula will not be hampered". No government officials from Seoul paid condolences, according to the Unification Ministry. Lee Hee Ho, the 89-year-old widow of former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, and Hyundai Group Chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun led a private group of 18 South Koreans on a two-day visit, where state media showed them being greeted by Jong-un on 26 December.

Asian stock markets fell soon after the announcement of Kim's death, echoing concerns about regional instability. At the opening of the European markets, stocks also fell, but Indonesian and United States stock markets rose after the announcement of Kim Jong-il's death.

North Korea announced a 232-member funeral committee headed by Kim Jong-un that planned and oversaw Jong-il's funeral, which took place on 28 December. Observers believe the order of names on the list gives clues to the rankings of individuals in the regime's power structure with Kim Jong-un's position on top a further indication that he is Jong-il's successor as supreme leader. According to Kim Keun-sik of Kyungnam University, "The list is in the order of members of the standing committee of the Politburo, then members and candidate members. It shows that the party will be stronger power than the military," because Kim Jong-il's brother-in-law Jang Song-taek or O Kuk-ryol, the vice-chairman of the National Defense Commission, are listed further down."

The National Funeral Committee released the following details on 19 December 2011:

The 232 members of the funeral committee were:

On 20 December, Jong-il's embalmed body lay in state in a glass coffin at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where his father Kim Il-sung is also interred, for an 11-day mourning period prior to the funeral. Like his father, Kim's body was covered in a red flag and surrounded by blossoms of his namesake flowers, red kimjongilia. It is expected that the body will be placed next to his father's bier following the funeral and mourning period. As solemn music played, Kim Jong-un entered the hall to view his father's bier, surrounded by military honour guards. He observed a moment of solemn silence, then circled the bier, followed by other officials.

On Saturday 24 December Kim Jong-un made a third visit to the palace where his father's body is lying in state. At this broadcast, Jang Sung-taek, whom South Korean intelligence assumed would play larger roles supporting the heir, stood with military uniform near young Kim, who wept this time, as he paid respects to Kim Jong-il's body lying in state.

The funeral itself occurred on 28 December. The, 3-hour funeral procession was covered in snow (which local newscasters described as "heaven's tears") as soldiers beat their chests and called out "Father, Father." A Lincoln Continental limousine carried a giant portrait of Jong-il. Jong-il's casket, draped by the Korean Workers' Party flag, was carried on top of another Lincoln Continental hearse while Kim Jong-un and his uncle Jang Sung-taek were immediately behind. Army chief of the general staff Ri Yong-ho and defence minister Vice-Marshal Kim Yong-chun walked along the opposite side of the vehicle during the procession segments in the Kumsusan Memorial Palace. The procession returned to Kumsusan Palace where Jong-un stood flanked by the top party and military officials who are expected to be his inner circle of advisers as rifles fired 21 times, then saluted again as goose-stepping soldiers carrying flags and rifles marched by the palace square. Reportedly, Jong-il's body will be embalmed and put on display indefinitely in the manner of Kim Il-sung and other Communist leaders such as Lenin, Mao, and Ho Chi Minh.

The convoy during the funeral procession was composed of lead patrol cars, the funeral hearse and its escorts, military escorts, motorised colour guards, an OB van of Korean Central Television, various cars (including a fleet of black Mercedes), and trucks carrying wreaths and five military bands from the KPA.

On the day of the memorial service, 29 December, Chairman of the Presidium, Kim Yong-nam, gave an address to mourners gathered in Kim Il-sung Square.

Kim Young-nam told mourners that "The great heart of comrade Kim Jong-il has ceased to beat... such an unexpected and early departure from us is the biggest and the most unimaginable loss to our party and the revolution," and that North Korea would "transform the sorrow into strength and courage 1,000 times greater under the leadership of comrade Kim Jong-un."

The chairman also affirmed Kim Jong-un's position as his father's successor saying "Respected Comrade Kim Jong-un is our party, military and country’s supreme leader who inherits great comrade Kim Jong-il’s ideology, leadership, character, virtues, grit and courage".

General Kim Jong-gak addressing the memorial service on behalf of the military, saying "Our people's military will serve comrade Kim Jong-un at the head of our revolutionary troops and will continue to maintain and complete the Songun accomplishments of great leader Kim Jong-il". Songun refers to Kim Jong-il's policy of prioritising the "military first" in economic decisions.

Kim Jong-un did not make an address but stood with his head bowed, watching from a balcony of the Grand People's Study House, overlooking the square. He was flanked by his aunt, Kim Kyong-hui, her husband, Jang Sung-taek, and senior party and military officials.

After the speeches, and a nationwide observance of three-minute silence, a row of heavy artillery guns were fired off in a 21-gun salute followed by a cacophony of sirens, horns and whistles sounded off simultaneously from trains and ships across the country to mark the end of the mourning period. The assembly concluded with a military band playing "The Internationale". State television then broadcast a military choir and wind band performing "The Song of General Kim Jong Il" to formally conclude.

Kim Jong-un's elder brothers, Kim Jong-nam and Kim Jong-chol, are not known to have been in attendance either at the lying in state or on either date, the funeral or the memorial service.

The funeral showcased seven officials who are believed to be mentors or major aides to Kim Jong-un: Jang Song-taek, Mr. Kim's uncle and a vice-chairman of the National Defense Commission; Kim Ki-nam, North Korea's propaganda chief; Choe Tae-bok, the party secretary in charge of external affairs; Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho, head of the military's general staff; Kim Yong-chun, the defence minister; Kim Jong-gak, a four-star general whose job is to monitor the allegiance of other generals; and U Dong-chuk, head of the North's secret police and spy agency.

On 1 January 2012 the Japanese daily "Yomiuri Shimbun" reported that Kim Jong-Nam secretly flew to Pyongyang from Macau on 17 December 2011, after learning about his father's death that day and is presumed to have accompanied Kim Jong-Un when paying his last respects to their father. He left after a few days to return to Macau and was not in attendance at the funeral in order to avoid speculation about the succession.

According to "Daily NK", anyone who did not participate in the organised mourning sessions or did not seem genuine enough in their sorrow has been sentenced to at least six months in a labour camp. Mourners were also barred from wearing hats, gloves or scarves even though the temperature that day was —presumably so authorities could check to make sure they were displaying sufficient grief. North Korea angrily denied this accusation, blaming it on "reptile media" in the pay of the South Korean government. A photo slideshow from The Los Angeles Times does show multiple mourners with gloves and scarves.

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) claimed that strange natural phenomena occurred in North Korea around the time of Kim Jong-il's death:

In the past, the North Korean government has been known to encourage stories of miraculous deeds and supernatural events credited to Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. KCNA also claimed that more than five million North Koreans, more than 25% of the national population, had shown up to mourn Kim.