William Bindon Blood

He was born on the family estate in Cranagher,[1] near Ennis in County Clare, to Bindon Blood (1775–1855) and his second wife Harriet Bagot (1780–1835).

[3][4] Bindon Blood went to secondary school in Edinburgh before returning to Ireland and earning a BA (and Gold Medal) in mathematics at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1838.

[6] There he carried out innovative mathematical analyses of stresses in continuous girders with multiple beams, supported by scale models which confirmed his theories.

This work was credited in the design of the Boyne Viaduct in Drogheda, whose central span alone was 269 feet long, the longest in the world when this railway bridge was completed in 1855[6] Queen's University, Ireland awarded him DSc (honoris causa) in 1882.

[2] Following Margaret's early death in 1849, and his return to Ireland and taking up of the Queen's College Galway professorship in 1850, W. Bindon Blood remarried, in 1855, this time in Dublin to Maria Augusta Persse (1830–1860), daughter of Robert Henry Persse and Katharine Isabella Seymour.