Researching John Nolan

Nolan left Taking Back Sunday in 2003 along with bassist Shaun Cooper, with whom he formed Straylight Run. During March 2010, he and Cooper rejoined Taking Back Sunday, reforming the Tell All Your Friends-era lineup. Nolan is also a solo artist and has recorded an album called Height and "Live at Looney Tunes."

He was the eldest son of John Nolan, Justice of the Peace, of Ballinderry, Tuam, and Mary Anne, Walter Nolan, of Loughboy. He received his education at Clongowes Wood College, Stonyhurst, Trinity College, Dublin, the Staff College and Woolwich. He entered the British Royal Artillery in 1857 and served throughout the 1868 Expedition to Abyssinia. As adjutant to Colonel Milward, he was present at the capture of Amba Mariam (then known as Magdala) and was mentioned in despatches. He was awarded the Abyssinian War Medal and retired from the Army with the rank of lieutenant-colonel in 1881.

Nolan became involved in the nascent home rule campaign of the Home Rule League. On 8 February 1872 Nolan was elected MP for Galway County in a by-election, defeating by a large majority the Conservative William Le Poer Trench. Of the 4,686 available electors, who were chiefly Catholic, 2,823 voted for Nolan and 658 for Trench.

Trench appealed the result, claiming on petition that there was widespread intimidation during the election campaign. The local Catholic bishops and clergy had strongly supported Nolan, chiefly because the family of his opponent, a Captain Trench, was active in proselytism. The trial of the Galway County Election Petition began, before Judge William Keogh, on 1 April and ended on 21 May 1872.

Judge Keogh found that Capt. Nolan had been elected by the undue influence and intimidation and in his report stated that he found 36 persons guilty of undue influence and intimidation, including John MacHale, the Archbishop of Tuam, the Bishop of Clonfert, Patrick Duggan, and the Bishop of Galway, John McEvilly, and twenty nine named priests, such intimidation being in some cases exercised in the very churches. As a result, Captain Nolan was unseated on 13 June, the seat going to Captain Trench. The judgement caused an uproar; the judge was threatened with removal from the bench and his reputation never recovered.

Nolan retook the seat at the 1874 election. He remained MP after the 1885 constituency reforms as MP for Galway North until 1895.

When the Irish Parliamentary Party split over Charles Stewart Parnell's long-term family relationship with Katharine O'Shea, the separated wife of a fellow MP, Nolan sided with his deposed leader and seconded the motion to retain Parnell as chairman at the ill-fated party meeting in Committee Room 15 of the House of Commons. He went on to become whip of the pro-Parnellite rump of the split party, the Irish National League. He lost the Galway North seat to an Anti-Parnellite, Denis Kilbride, in 1895 and stood unsuccessfully as a Parnellite for Louth South in 1896. He was re-elected unopposed at Galway North after the reunification of the Parliamentary Party in 1900. But at the National Convention of 8 January 1902 he was expelled from the United Irish League on the ground of his 'harsh and unparalleled oppression of his Mweenish tenantry'. In 1906 he stood as an independent Nationalist and lost the Galway North seat for the last time.

Nolan had a recurring role in his nephew Jonathan Nolan's television series Person of Interest as John Greer, a mysterious British figure connected with Decima Technologies and the main villain from seasons three to five of the show.

He was born near Omagh, County Tyrone and educated at University College Dublin. After graduation in 1909 he carried out research in the Physics Department under Professor John A. McClelland on the electrical charge of rain. He was awarded D.Sc in 1917.

In 1914, he married Hannah "Teresa" Hurley from near Bantry, in County Cork. The couple had five sons, one of whom died at the end of World War II. He was an uncle of abstract painter Evin Nolan.

In 1920, he succeeded McClelland as Professor of Experimental Physics, guiding research into atmospheric electricity and aerosols. Together with his brother, Patrick J. Nolan, and their students, they studied ionization, equilibrium and the relationships of small and large ions in the lower atmosphere. He also, with V. H. Guerrini, developed in 1935 the diffusion battery for measuring the size of aerosol particles.

When the School of Cosmic Physics was established at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in 1947, John J. Nolan was appointed as its inaugural Chairman. He served until his death in 1952, and was succeeded in this position by Ernest Walton. In 1950, Nolan successfully nominated Cecil Powell for the Nobel Prize in Physics. Five year earlier, he had nominated Patrick Blackett, who became a Nobel laureate in 1948.

In 1920, he was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, becoming Secretary in 1923 and President from 1949 to 1952. He was also Registrar of University College Dublin from 1940 until his death. In 1952, he died while lecturing a large class at UCD in Earlsfort Terrace. He was succeeded as professor of physics at UCD in 1953 by his former student T. E. Nevin, whose M.Sc. thesis under Nolan was on "The Effect of Water Vapour on the Diffusion Coefficients and Mobilities of Ions in the Air,"