The 150th anniversary of The Physiological Society provides an opportunity to reflect both on the development of physiology as a discipline in Ireland and on the Society’s sustained and continuing contribution to that development. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the teaching of physiology in Irish universities was largely embedded within medical education and training. Over the course of the twentieth century, however, physiology increasingly developed as a distinct academic discipline and experimental science. This evolution was accompanied by the establishment and expansion of undergraduate degree programmes in physiology, which have educated and trained generations of physiologists and contributed to the development of physiological research across Ireland.

Irish physiology was central to the very genesis of the Society. Gerald Francis Yeo, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin who studied and taught physiology in Dublin before his appointment as Professor of Physiology at King’s College London, was a founding member and served as secretary from 1876 until 1889. Engagement with the Society has contributed to the growth, diversification and internationalisation of Irish physiology. The Society’s scientific meetings held in Ireland provide a particularly valuable record of its engagement with, and influence on, research in this country. The first documented meeting of the Society in Ireland took place in Dublin in 1948, hosted jointly by Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland [1]. This was followed by meetings at University College Galway in 1965 and University College Cork in 1973, bringing the Society into direct contact with an increasingly established physiological research community outside Dublin. Further meetings were held in Dublin, Cork, Belfast and Dundalk throughout the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries, reflecting both the geographical spread and growing diversity of physiological research across the island.

The Society’s journals have provided an equally important platform for the dissemination of physiological research from Irish universities. Numerous publications by researchers based in Ireland have appeared in The Journal of Physiology and Experimental Physiology, while Irish academics have also contributed to the leadership of these journals through senior editorial roles. Through these activities, the Society has provided not only a forum through which research from Ireland could be communicated to an international audience, but also a channel through which developments in international physiology could influence research, teaching and professional development within Ireland.