18 May, 2023
Pictured L-R: Prof. J Bernard Walsh, Mary Coakley, Prof. Rose Anne Kenny, Prof. Joe Harbison and Prof. Plunkett
On 9 May 2023 a lecture theatre dedicated to the memory of Professor Davis Coakley, Founding Director of the Mercer’s Institute for Successful Ageing, was launched in MISA.
Davis Coakley, who died in September 2022 after a short illness, is one of Ireland’s best known physicians and medical historians.
He held a personal Chair in Medical Gerontology in Trinity College Dublin, awarded in 1996; the first such academic appointment in the country. He went on to establish the first Department of Medical Gerontology, home to many of Ireland’s PhD, MD and Master graduates in the speciality. He pioneered many national policy and service developments benefitting ageing in Ireland over a 40 year period.
Having led negotiations with the American charity, Atlantic Philanthropies and their founder, Chuck Feeney, he secured a large philanthropic award enabling Ireland to command a leadership role in research in ageing and in a new purpose built institute for successful ageing at St James’s Hospital, known as the Mercer’s Institute for Successful Ageing (MISA). MISA was launched by President Michael D Higgins in 2016.
Davis held many senior positions on committees and boards over the years. He was Director of Postgraduate Education and Dean of Health Sciences at Trinity College. He initiated Trinity’s membership of the prestigious Eurolife Consortium and developed the first Masters in Geriatric Nursing. Whereas he received many awards and medals, he was particularly delighted with the Charles University Prague 650 Jubilee Medal for his work celebrating education of Irish medical students in Prague in the 1700s, including a successful exhibition in Trinity College's Long Room in 1998 – ‘A Bohemian Refuge: Irish students in Prague in the eighteenth century’, which also exhibited in Prague.
Davis was instrumental in preservation of a number of important infrastructures, both in Trinity College and St James’s Hospital, such as the preservation of the birthplace of Oscar Wilde, 21 Westland Row – now a successful creative writing centre. Typical of his attention to detail, he oversaw it's refurbishment in the style of the 1850s. As a result of his intervention, Oscar Wilde’s only grandson, Merlin Holland, travelled a number of times to Ireland thereafter to engage in national and university events.
In 1992 Davis turned to writing, scripting and narrating a play to raised funds for the preservation of the Round Room at the Rotunda. Staged at the Gate, Stephen Brennan played Oscar Wilde and two of Davis’ sons – John Davis and James – performed as Wilde’s children.
Davis was passionate about history and literature and as such was the longest running trustee of the beautiful Edward Worth Library at Dr Steeven’s hospital, now carefully refurbished and open to scholarly readers and research. He was also Librarian for the Dun’s Library.
In addition to publishing over 150 original scientific papers, he published 18 books on medical science and on historical and literary subjects. Two of his medical books were deemed “pioneering volumes in their field”. His beautifully illustrated book “The Anatomy Lesson; Art and Medicine” informed a successful exhibition of Irish anatomical art at the National Gallery. His “Irish Masters of Medicine” collated the important historical contributions to medicine of 42 Irish medical practitioners and “The Importance of Being Irish; Oscar Wilde” – was the first ever biography to explore how Wilde’s formative years in Ireland had a significant impact on his life and writings, a concept which evolved from Davis’ extensive knowledge of the medical cultural milieu in which Oscar spent his early years.
It is almost impossible to do justice to the essence of this great scholar and clinician, to his remarkable interpersonal skills and his ever present wit and roguish sense of humour.