FATHER Ernan McMullin, a professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, died on Tuesday at Letterkenny General Hospital.
McMullin, 86, joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1954.
A native of Clar, Ballybofey, McMullin was a scholar in the philosophy of science. He studied physics at the National University of Ireland under Nobel laureate Erwin Schroedinger and theology at Maynooth College before being ordained a priest in 1949 and receiving his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Louvain in 1954.
He was recruited to the Notre Dame faculty by its then-new president, the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh.
At Notre Dame, McMullin chaired the philosophy department from 1965 to 1972 and served as director of the history and philosophy of science program and of the Reilly Center for Science, Technology & Human Values before retiring in 1994, continuing to teach on the graduate level until 2003. For the last seven years, he lived both in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Donegal.
McMullin wrote and lectured widely on subjects ranging from the relationship between cosmology and theology, to the role of values in understanding science, to the impact of Darwinism on Western religious thought.
A funeral Mass will be celebrated Friday in Clar, Donegal. Memorial donations may be made to Down Syndrome Ireland, care of Citywest Business Park, Old Naas Road, Dublin 12, Ireland.
