[2] The institute, under its governing act, is empowered to "train students in methods of advanced research" but does not itself award degrees; graduate students working under the supervision of Institute researchers can, with the agreement of the governing board of the appropriate school, be registered for a higher degree in any university worldwide.

De Valera was aware of the decline of the Dunsink Observatory, where Sir William Rowan Hamilton and others had held the position of Royal Astronomer of Ireland.

[5][6] Currently, the institute has its schools located at three premises on the Southside of Dublin at 10 Burlington Road, 31 Fitzwilliam Place and 5 Merrion Square.

[7] Work by the Geophysics section of the School of Cosmic Physics on the formation of the North Atlantic demonstrated that the Irish continental shelf extended much further than previously thought, thereby more than doubling the area of the seabed over which Ireland can claim economic exploitation rights under the international law of the sea.

Fundamental work in statistical mechanics by the School of Theoretical Physics has found application in computer switching technology and led to the establishment of an Irish campus company to exploit this intellectual property.

The institute has also in recent years been one of the main agents helping to set up a modern e-Infrastructure in support of all Irish research.

In 1968 the Royal Society recognised de Valera's contribution to science in establishing the institute by electing him to honorary fellowship.

The School of theoretical Physics initially consisted of just one member, Professor Erwin Schrödinger, who moved into 65 Merrion Square in February 1941.

These lectures brought together staff and students of third-level establishments in the Dublin area, exposing them to twentieth-century theoretical physics.

Members of the mathematical community at the time seized the opportunity to hear the lectures of Schrödinger and Heitler and within a few years the material covered began to find its way onto undergraduate university courses.

Lochlainn O'Raifeartaigh made contributions in the application of symmetries in theoretical particle physics and John T. Lewis had interests including Bose–Einstein condensation and Large deviations theory.

[24] It was also partially in response to a proposal prepared by Leo Wenzel Pollak then working for the Irish Meteorological Service in Foynes, who argued the need for a geophysical research centre in Ireland.

The first Head of Astronomy was Hermann Brück, who established a program of solar near-UV spectroscopy and photo-electric stellar photometry.

Geophysics was headed by Leo Wenzel Pollak who worked mainly on atmospheric aerosol physics in close collaboration with the Nolan brothers in UCD.

Attempts were made to persuade the Austrian Nobel laureate Victor Francis Hess to come to Dublin as first head of the Cosmic Ray section, but in the end, he declined and the position was offered to a Hungarian physicist, Lajos Janossy, who came from Patrick Blackett's laboratory in Manchester and worked on what would now be called air shower physics.

[28] The School pioneered, in collaboration with the University of Hamburg, a seismic study of the North Atlantic resulting in the discovery that the Irish continental shelf extended much further out than previously thought with potentially very significant economic benefits for Ireland.

More recently the School has, with funding from the PRTLI programme cycles 3 and 4, invested in a shared national research e-infrastructure culminating in the establishment of the Irish Centre for High-End Computing ICHEC.

[29] In November 2009, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin, TD, agreed to the establishment of The National Data Centre (NDC) for the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) within the Geophysics Section of DIAS.

[32] The Astronomy and Astrophysics section is led by Prof. Peter T. Gallagher, who leads the Solar Physics and Space Weather research group[33] and is Director of Dunsink Observatory.