Kinahan, George Henry (1829–1908), geologist, was born 19 December 1829, the third of eight sons of Daniel Kinahan (d. 1859), barrister, and Louisa Anne Kinahan (née Miller), of Belfield, Co. Dublin, who also had seven daughters. The family was well connected: Sir Robin Kinahan (qv) was a relative, and George's elder brother John Robert Kinahan (1828–63) was professor of botany at the Carmichael school of medicine and professor of zoology in the Royal College of Science for Ireland. It has been said that Kinahan left TCD (1853) with a diploma in engineering, but he appears neither in Alumni Dubl. nor in the list of graduates, and may instead, like his brother John Robert, have attended the Academic Institute, Harcourt St., Dublin. He worked for a year with Sir John Macneill (qv) on the Boyne railway viaduct. In August 1854 he joined the staff of the Geological Survey of Ireland as an assistant geologist, and in 1869 he was district surveyor, based in Recess, Co. Galway, and responsible for a good deal of the one inch to one mile (1:63,360) geological map of the south-west of the country. He also worked on other areas, including Donegal, and from 1876 to 1882 he lived with his family in Avoca, Co. Wicklow. There as elsewhere he was an enthusiastic and indefatigable field geologist, who became familiar with the contemporary conditions, the history, and the potential for development of Ireland's mining industry; from 1886 to 1888, at joint meetings of the RDS and the Royal Geological Society of Ireland, he gave papers on the economic aspects of Irish geology. These were published by the RDS as volumes v and vi of their scientific proceedings, and by the RGS as volume viii of its journal; this, separately titled The economic geology of Ireland (1889), is described by Davies (1995) as ‘invaluable’ and has been used by generations of geologists and analysts.
Kinahan was the author of an enormous number of papers on geology and other aspects of natural history and antiquarian studies, delivered to learned societies in Ireland and England; his obituarist declared that he had found it impossible to compile a complete list. He published several other books on geology, including Valleys and their relation to fissures, fractures and faults (1875), vitiated by stubborn adherence to a theory of valley formation that was out-of-date even in 1875. His Handy-book of rock names (1873) is one of several works erroneously attributed in at least one source to his son, Gerrard H. Kinahan.
A Manual of the geology of Ireland (1878) appeared in the same year as a work on exactly the same subject by Edward Hull (qv), director of the Geological Survey and Kinahan's superior. This apparently harmless coincidence suggests, in fact, either a total breakdown of communication within the Geological Survey, or an attempt by one or the other author to upstage a rival; it was just one event in a bitter feud between the two, initiated by Kinahan when Hull was appointed director (1869). Kinahan felt that he should have been appointed, not Hull, and for the next twenty years carried on a campaign of alternating insolent non-cooperation and outright defiance; contemporaries noted his ‘outrageously savage conduct’ towards Hull (Davies, 90). Even an obituary in the minutes of the RIA noted that in controversies Kinahan's strongly held opinions were ‘somewhat vigorously expressed’. Many of his papers were written to try to prove Hull wrong on some point of geological opinion, and he sometimes physically threatened his rival. The work of the Geological Survey suffered greatly as a result of the feud; Kinahan was at times apparently mentally unbalanced, and was threatened on numerous occasions with dismissal. The unedifying relations between the two men, and the well documented ugly scenes between them have tended to obscure Kinahan's great knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, Irish geology. He was president of the Royal Geological Society of Ireland 1880–81, was elected MRIA (1868), and was a council member of the Academy 1890–1901. Kinahan retired from the Geological Survey 31 August 1890, and died 5 December 1908 in Clontarf, Dublin; he was buried in Avoca, Co. Wicklow.
He married (12 November 1855) Harriette Anne Gerrard (d. 1892) from Co. Westmeath, in St Thomas's parish church, Dublin. They had three sons and five daughters (in a pattern similar to that among Kinahan's own siblings, six of his children did not marry, and only one had children). Their son Gerrard Kinahan (1858–86), who had trained as a geologist, was killed by a poisoned arrow while surveying in West Africa.