He was imperious and some considered him comical. But he silenced his detractors with outstanding intellect and scholarship. He had his foibles, although as president of University College Cork, he left a lasting mark. There are few in the college today who speak of its history without discussing the contribution of Dr Alfred O'Rahilly.
Now, a new building which houses all the college's language departments as well as a major part of the business facility - has been dedicated to him.
Prof John A. Murphy, who ended a notable academic career by writing the history of UCC, which will stand as a lasting monument to the college's influence on Cork city, graduated under Alfred O'Rahilly, receiving his scroll in the Aula Max, like so many before him.
"He knew," says John A., "the difference between stuffiness and dignity and was always assured of his own dignity."
O'Rahilly ruled his domain like an emperor. He did not suffer fools - even if some of the fools thought he was one. He was uncommonly but secretly generous to students and people in need, and his lively brain was matched by unbounded physical energy. A cleric at heart, he married, had two children, and then after his retirement and the death of his wife, entered religious orders.
Even before he became a priest, he was a turbulent one.
John A., who retains close links with UCC, is quite sure about where O'Rahilly stands in the order of Irish academic life. He is also chairman of the college's heritage committee, which decides how and why buildings should be named.
O'Rahilly was UCC president from 1943 to 1954 and had been on the staff since 1915. The college had plenty of time to acclimatise to his colourful persona.
He wrote on one memorable occasion to a Miss Mitchell, president of the college's women's club, in 1947.
"Dear Miss Mitchell - I want to make it clear that I am not withdrawing my official request to the women students to wear stockings but I am willing not to press the case too much provided no abuses are made of it. Personally, if I were lecturing I would not allow girls to come in without stockings nor do I think they should attend church without stockings.
"After enquiring, I have now ascertained that stockings are cheaper and plentiful at the moment. Therefore, it seems to me that there is no excuse for not wearing them. When the girls go hiking in the summer, etc, I do not mind what they do but we do want a certain amount of dignity and self-respect here in the college. If I find any girls sitting down in the quadrangle with knees crossed, etc, and without stockings, I shall have to take action. Meanwhile, understand that I am not going to be too meticulous unless the abuse becomes widespread, Yours sincerely, A. O' Rahilly, President." The UCC president, says John A. in his history, was reputed to have made "grand surveillance prowls through the quadrangle" during which he "chastely pinched the legs of seated female students in order to ensure that they were really wearing stockings . . ."
But that wasn't all: "A related legend has it that a defiant young woman proved beyond doubt that she was wearing stockings by swiftly raising her skirt." Horror! Horror!
The UCC history shows that even under his predecessor P.J. Merriman, described by John A. as a low-key president, "O'Rahilly, the heir presumptive, came to behave more and more as a de facto president."
He offered his views on behalf of the college, his influence deriving more from his "dynamic personality, national standing and apparent multi-disciplinary omniscience than from the admittedly powerful office of registrar.
"When he became a Holy Ghost priest in 1955 . . . his image still dominated the lacklustre reign of his successor, Henry St John Atkins (1954-63), whose registrarship during the O'Rahilly presidency was a very subordinate office indeed. All in all, it is not fanciful to speak of a whirlwind age of O'Rahilly that lasted upward of 40 years."
Personally, he hated the idea of the presidency, O'Rahilly confided to someone a week after he applied for the post and just as he began a vigorous canvassing campaign. According to John A.: "As president, he was the flesh and blood genius loci (the last living-in chief executive), the most colourful academic of his time, and the most vibrant president in the history of the college - a volatile and bustling polymath of inexhaustible energy and creativity, a Renaissance universal man who much preferred the Middle Ages - he threw himself with gusto into the great and petty debates of his day."
O'Rahilly's range of interest was so varied that he was envied. Politics, sociology, finance, Christology, mathematical physics and history, came within his ambit. And if some people scoffed - including an Irish Times jibe that he had the best mind of the 12th century - his self-assessment was assured. "I never stand on dignity, I talk freely and expect to be talked to in the same way," he said.
The author adds: "One critique of his work on money ended with the reflection that the book would enable people to relieve rural tedium by laughing the nights away. O'Rahilly's contemplated multi-volume life of Christ prompted his NUI colleague Mgr Padraig de Bruin to observe that a life of O'Rahilly by Christ would be much more interesting."
From the UCC record of 1970 comes this obituary reflection on O'Rahilly: "He exploded on UCC as assistant lecturer in mathematics in 1914. It is doubtful if the place was ever quite the same afterwards: up to then, with Sir Bertram Windle as president, the ascendancy had been firmly entrenched." The obituary reflected how two years after Dr O'Rahilly's arrival in Cork he became professor of mathematical physics, and, in 1920, registrar. Twenty-three years later (1943), he was elected president. During this time, he published innumerable articles and books on diverse topics. As registrar, he established the Cork University Press and built up the library to the position where it came third only to the National Library and that of Trinity College Dublin.
As president, he founded the adult education courses (1946), which represented a pioneer endeavour in the field. He retired from UCC in 1954, two years after the death of his wife.
His two children, Ronan, a professor of anatomy in the United States, and Sybil, were both grown up by then and Dr O'Rahilly was ordained in 1955 at Blackrock College in Dublin, where afterwards he lived as a secular priest.
Obviously a man with his own way of seeing everything, he is said to have commented to Dr John Charles McQuaid not long before he died in a nursing home that he must have been one of the few men in Ireland to have received all seven sacraments.