Scientists and their
Belief in God


May 19, 2009 version

Seven Scientists Who Believe in God
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Robert Boyle (1627-1691)
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Gottfried W. Leibnitz (1646-1716)
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Charles B. Thaxton (living)
Selected Lists of Scientists and Advances
Some Far Eastern Scientific Advances
Indian Subcontinent Advances
Middle Eastern Advances
Former Soviet Union / Finland Advances
Some Western Scientists Who Believed in God
Non-Theistic Scientists / Engineers
Scientists with Other Beliefs
Scientists with Beliefs Unknown to me


Seven Scientists Who Believe in God

 

"All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truths come from on high and contained in the sacred writings." John Herschel (1791-1871) discoverer of over 500 new nebulas.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

 

Galileo was born in Pisa in 1564. His father Vincenzio was a mathematician and musician. As a child Galileo studied logic, Greek, and Latin, but disliked science, though he liked inventing machines. He was also a good musician and painter. Until he was 17, his father kept him away from math, because he was afraid studying math would take him away from his study of medicine. Galileo became interested in math when he overheard a lesson in geometry. His father reluctantly sent him to college, Later he had to drop out though, because of lack of money.

He enjoyed reading of Copernicus and Kepler, but he was at first reluctant to get into astronomy because he feared ridicule. His first telescope was 3X magnification, but his best was 32X. They were used all over Europe. He was the first to see the mountains on the moon, the moons of Jupiter, and sunspots. He believed comets were solar reflections on the air.

Galileo showed off his telescope to Rome in 1611. The Catholic Church said his views were against scripture. Galileo explained why they were not, and produced other verses to show the Copernican system (earth goes around the sun) was true. He received a semi-official warning in 1615 and the next year he had to pledge to Pope Paul V he would not speak of this anymore.

In 1633 Galileo later tried to get this pledge revoked, but instead got examined by the Inquisition. He was released but had to live secluded for the rest of his life.

Galileo's troubles with the established church are famous, but his problem was with the Catholic Church, not Christianity. Galileo himself was a Christian who witnessed to people and saw support for his scientific studies in the Bible.


Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Pascal was a Jensenist, Catholics who believed in much of Calvinism and incurred the displeasure of the Jesuits. They especially would not like Pascal, as he gave some witty answers. He knew at least some of the Bible, and much of the early church fathers, including Augustine, Prosper of Aquitaine, Chrysostom, Hilary, and Tertullian. He also knew of Maimonides, Josephus, and Philo. Unfortunately, like many Catholic scholars, he focused more on tradition and the early church fathers than on the Bible.

Like other Catholics, Pascal believed in purgatory, the apocrypha, transubstantiation, and that the Pope is the head of the church, though he acknowledged that many popes were biased. Here are a few quotes from his main work, the Pensees.

"Christianity is strange. It bids man recognize that he is vile, even abominable, and bids him desire to be like God. Without such a counterpoise, this dignity would make him horribly vain, or this humiliation would make him terribly abject." Pensees 7.537.

Pascal and Other Religions

"It is a deplorable thing to see all men deliberating on means alone, and not on the end. Each thinks how he will acquit himself in his condition; but as for the choice of condition, or of country, chance gives them to us. It is a pitiable thing to see so many Turks, here-tics, and infidels follow the way of their fathers for the sole reason that each has been imbued with the prejudice that it is the best. And that fixes for each man his condition of locksmith, soldier, etc." Pensees 2.98

Pascal's Wager

Belief in God amounts to great potential gain and no potential loss. Not believing in God means great potential loss and no potential gain. Great potential gain with no potential loss is better than great potential loss with no potential gain. So it is better to believe in God than not to believe in God.

"...Nothing is so important to man as his own state, nothing is so formidable to him as eternity; and thus it is not natural that there should be men indifferent to the loss of their existence, and to the perils of everlasting suffering...." Pascal's Pensees 3.194.

Pascal and Evidence of Christianity

"I see many contradictory religions, and consequently all false save one. Each wants to be believed on its own authority, and threatens unbelievers. I do not therefore believe them. Every one can say this; every one can call himself a prophet. But I see that Christian religion wherein prophecies are fulfilled; and that is what every one cannot do. Pascal gave a list of messianic prophecies to show the truth of Christianity in Pensees 11:727 (p.315-316)

"...The God of Christians is not a God who is simply the author of mathematical truths, or of the order of the elements; that is the view of heathens and Epicureans. He is not merely a God who exercises His providence over the life and fortunes of men, to bestow on those who worship Him a long and happy life. That was the portion of the Jews. But the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Christians, is a God of love and comfort, a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom He possesses, a God who makes them conscious of their inward wretchedness, and His infinite mercy, who unites Himself to their inmost soul, who fills it with humility and joy, with confidence and love, who renders them incapable of any other end than Himself...." Pensees 8.556.

"...All who seek God without Jesus Christ, and who rest in nature, either find no light to satisfy them, or come to form for themselves a means of knowing God and serving Him without a mediator. Thereby they fall either into atheism, or into deism, two things which the Christian religion abhors almost equally. Without Jesus Christ the world would not exist; for it should needs be either that it would be destroyed or be a hell...." Pensees 8:556.

Other Pascal's Ponderables

4. "To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher."

101 "I set it down as a fact that if all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world...."

102. "Some vices only lay hold of us by means of others, and these, like branches, fall on removal of the trunk."

100. "...There are different degrees in this aversion to truth; but all may perhaps be said to have it in some degree, because it is inseparable from self-love...."

Robert Boyle (1627-1691)

Robert Boyle was the 14th child of the earl of Cork, Ireland. He learned Latin and French as a child and went to Eton when he was 8 years old. At 14 he was in Florence studying Galileo. Most know of him for Boyle's law in chemistry, that at constant temperature the pressure times volume is constant. Fewer people know that he gave large amounts of money for Bible translations, learned Greek and Syriac, and he founded the Boyle lectures to prove the truth of Christianity vs. atheism, theism, paganism, and Islam. He wrote on Genesis.

Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

Born on Christmas day 1642, and lived 85 years until 1727. His father died two months before he was born, and his step-father was a rector in a church. He was raised by his grandmother. He was a poor student, until he got into a fight with another boy, and out of jealousy decided to show everyone what he could do, and became the top of his class. At 14 Newton was taken out of school to help out on his mother's farm. He was not a very good farmhand though, always wasting his time doing mathematics.

He eventually was sent back to school and graduated from Cambridge. In 1665 he discovered the binomial theorem, and differential calculus, which he called "fluxions" In 1666 he left Cambridge due to the plague, and he started to think about gravity and the moon, as well as optics and color. He was elected to the Royal society in 1672 (when he was 30) due to his experiments on color. One of Newton's key conclusions, "that the length of the band of colors a given distance from a spectrum is the same for a prism of any substance provided the angle was the same" was wrong. This is why Newton thought telescopes were of limited use, because chromatic aberration was uncorrectable. Newton later learned of his mistake from others and after that made some telescopes.

In 1692 Newton had an 18-month attack of insomnia and nervousness. In 1696 John Bernoulli challenged mathematicians to solve two problems within six months. Newton did not see the problems until a few months later, but he solved them the next day, transmitting the papers anonymously. They figured out who it was though. In 1703 he became the president of the Royal Society, and did not discover anything else of importance for the last 24 years of his life.

One time an atheist friend of Newton's came over and saw this scale model of the solar system that Newton had. He remarked at how beautiful it was and asked who made it. Newton nonchalantly replied that no one did; it just made itself. The atheist asked again, got the same answer, and started to get angry. Newton replied, "if you cannot believe something as simple as this model cannot make itself, how can you believe the heavens made themselves?"

Newton wrote more on theology than he did on science. However, his writings were heretical as he denied that Jesus was God. Newton became wealthy, invested a lot in the stock market which he lost in 1680 in the "South Sea Bubble." Intellectual genius does not necessarily mean financial acumen.

Gottfried W. Leibnitz (1646-1716)

Leibnitz and Newton independently invented calculus. Leibnitz first used the term "function".

Leibnitz knew both Latin and German at 8. His father was a professor of moral philosophy at Leipzig, and died when Gottfried was 8. After that, Leibnitz was for the most part self-taught, and had begun learning Greek by age 12. Between 12 and 15 he studied logic and Protestant theology. At 15 he went to the University of Leipzig to study law, which started with a two year study of Neo-Aristotelian philosophy. He wrote a number of brilliant essays on law, philosophy "what is an individual", and mathematics before he was 21.

Leibnitz thought the Cartesian philosophy was only the ante-room of truth. He wrote a chapter by chapter critique of Locke's Essay. He thought a newborn soul is not a blank tablet, but rather an unworked block of marble, with hidden veins that affect its ultimate form.

Apart from calculus, Leibnitz was concerned with answering why God allowed evil. Leibnitz wrote at great lengths to explain why this was the best of all possible worlds God could have created. Unfortunately Leibnitz was off-base here. As Christians we do not need to defend this fallen place as the best of all possible worlds, for it is not. The best of all possible worlds is Heaven, and as Norm Geisler said, this is the best of all possible paths to the best of all possible worlds.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

While Einstein was getting his Ph.D., he worked in the patent office, where he was bothered by the Michelson-Morley experiment that implied the speed of light was constant regardless of direction. Ten years later in 1905 he wrote his first paper, on the general theory of relativity, including E = mc2. Later he published his special theory of relativity, primarily dealing with gravity. Einstein extended Planck's theory of quantum mechanics, but he was against results that appeared to make some natural effects indeterminate. He is famous for his saying, "God does not play dice with the universe"

Albert Einstein supported Zionism but was a non-practicing Jew, a liberal pacifist who wisely left Germany when Hitler came to power. He could not see a universe that was self-created, without God. Yet like many Jews of that time, he was somewhat bitter toward God for allowing the Holocaust. Concerning the view that western religion is the basis for science, Einstein said, "To the Sphere of religion belongs the faith that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that it is comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." (Einstein: His Life and Times by Philipp Frank. 1953. p.286) Unfortunately Einstein rejected a personal God, believing instead in the pantheistic God of Benedict Spinoza. He also rejected rewards or punishment in the afterlife.

Most curiously, Einstein put a "fudge factor" in some of his equations so a "Big Bang" origin would not be required, because that would imply a personal God. When others noticed this, he admitted his error and reluctantly concluded that the universe was created. See The Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics by Norm Geisler p.213-215 for more info.

Charles B. Thaxton (living)

 

Professor Rejer Hooykas was a Dutch historian of science who wrote of the profound impact Christianity has had on the rise of modern science. Thaxton was greatly influenced by him at Harvard in 1971.

With Walter L. Bradley and Clarence Meninga, they authored, The Mystery of Life's Origin : Reassessing Current Theories in 1984. In this book they show how temperature, sunlight, and estimated early atmospheric oxygen (0.2 to 0.4%) making the concentration of organics in the supposed "primeval organic soup" 10-7 Molar, about the same as the organics in the ocean water today without the life. Since that book was published, many non-theistic scientists have abandoned the idea that life could have evolved in the open water. Current theories include hot water vents, clay deposits, and panspermia, that life was "seeded" here from another place.

Meekness and Truth™ Ministries, Inc.

www.biblequery.org or meeknessandtruth.org

 

Selected Lists of Scientists and Advances

Some Far Eastern Scientific Advances

Irrigation, silk, gunpowder, fireworks, catapults, paper, abacus, block printing, medicines, Mongol bows, advanced lacquer, Samurai swords, compass.

Recently airplane, engines, memory chips, supercomputers, video machines, flat panel screens

Scientists Lifetime Contribution
Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee (both Chin.-Amer.) 1922- & 1926- parity violations in weak interactions. 1957 Nobel (physics)
Chien-Shiung Wu

(Chinese-American)
1912-1997 Beta decay does not preserve parity
Shinichiro Tomonaga 1906- quantum electro-dynamics. Shared 1930 Nobel
Hideki Yukawa 1907-1981 1945 Nobel for meson
Yoichiro Namby (Japanese-Amer.) 1921 Strong interaction color symmetry
Kenichi Fukui 1918- 1981 Nobel prize in chemistry
Samuel Chao Chung Ting 1936- Shared 1976 Nobel J/psi particle
Leo Esaki (Japan) 1925- Shared 1973 Nobel semiconductor tunneling
Yuan T. Lee (Chinese-American) 1936- Shared 1986 Nobel mass spec. detection
Susumu Tonegawa 1939- Japanese molecular biologist 1987 Nobel prize in medicine for antibody diversity

 

Indian Subcontinent Advances

Irrigation, zero in math, indoor plumbing (1800 B.C.)

Scientists Lifetime Contribution
Aryabhatta 476 A.D.- Astronomer and mathematician who cataloged all known mathematical rules in poetry. Tables of sines, the sums of powers, quadratic equations.
Many Indians c.638-1150 Solved many complex algebra problems
Chandrasekhara Raman 1888-1970 Raman effect in spectroscopy. 1930 Nobel prize
Satyendra Bose 1894-1974 statistical calculations of bosons
Homi Jehangir Bhabha 1909-1966 Started nuclear energy in India
Subramanyan Chandresekhar (Indian-American) 1910-1995 Shared 1983 Nobel for structure and evolution of white dwarf stars
Abdul Salam (Qadiani) of Pakistan 1926-1996 Shared the 1979 Nobel prize in physics. He was a Qadiani, whom many Muslims consider non-Muslim heretics
In Pakistan c.2000 Pakistani A-bomb
A Muslim in India late 20th Indian A-bomb

 

Middle Eastern Advances

"Allah is omniscient does not justify ignorance" al-Biwini(sp?) 1048 A.D.

Irrigation, Damascus swords, shipbuilding, musical instruments, military cannons, coffee and spices, great maps, surgery, sanitation to fight plague, and cataloging plants and animals. Babylonians solved quadratic algebraic equations and a few cubic ones.

Middle Eastern Theistic Scientists / Philosophers

Scientist Lifetime Contribution
Khalid ben Yezid -708 First Muslims writer on alchemy. Pupil of the Syrian monk Marianus
Abu Yahya al Batriq 722 Al Mansur had him translate into Arabic books he requested from the Byzantine Emperor
Geber (Jabir ibn-Hayyan) c.760-c.815 Arab alchemist who distilled vinegar and made nitric acid. He started the search for transmuting metals and was fascinated with liquid mercury
Abu-Maaschor (Albumazar) 805-885 Works translated into Latin, including Flores Astrologici, from which we get our word astrology. Thought the world created when 7 planets in conjunction with stars.
Mohammed ibn Mu-sa al-Khowarizmi c.825 The word Algebra came from his name
Mohammed ben Begir al Batani (Albategnius) c.850-929 Corrected some of Ptolemy's tables. Introduced sines and tangents in the Mideast. His works published in Latin by Melanchthon.
Rhazes (Al-Razi) c.850-c.925 Persian alchemist who made plaster of Paris and studied antimony
Abu Kamil c.900 algebra contributions
Avicenna (Ibn-Sina) 979/980-1037 Most important physician between Roman and modern times. Also a scientist, philosopher, and logician who wrote almost 200 works. Albert Magnus in England learned much from him
Ibn al Haytham died 1039 A.H. Studied pressure, magnetism, and optics. Said that we see by light hitting our eyes, not rays the eye shoots out.
Avempace (Ibn Gabirol) 1021-1058 Jewish Spanish philosopher who espoused Aristotle
Averroes (Abu al-Walid Mohammed bin Ahmad ibn Mohammed ibn Roshd) 1126-1198 Admirer of Aristotle. Said much of the poverty and distress came from the way Muslims treated women
al-Karkhi c.1100 algebra contributions
Quth al-Din 1236 Explained rainbow's shape
'Izz al Din al Jaldaki died 1360 A.D. Studied evaporation Separated gold from silver with nitric acid.
Turks After 1500 live smallpox vaccine

 

 

Former Soviet Union / Finland Advances

Many strong mathematicians, rockets, nuclear

Scientists Lifetime Contribution
Ivan P. Pavlov 1849-1936 1904 Nobel dig.nerves
Mikhail Lomonosov 1711-1765 had atomic views 150 years ahead of his time. Nobody in the west read his works
Artturi I. Virtanen (Finland) 1895-1973 1945 Nobel prize in chemistry
Nikolai N. Semenov 1896-1986 1/2 1956 Nobel prize in chemistry
Pyotr Kapitsa 1894-1984 Worked with Rutherford. He won 1/3 1978 Nobel prize in physics for superfluidity (not superconductivity) on helium
A.I. Oparin 1894-1980 communist, biochemist who worked on origin of life experiments
Dmitri I. Mendeleev 1834-1907 Periodic Table
Andrey Markov, Sr. 1856-1922 Russian Mathematician. Stochastic processes and Markov chains
Andrey Markov, Jr. 1903-1979 Russian mathematician. Markov's principle, Markov's rule
Andrei Sakharov 1921-1989 Soviet H-bomb

Some Western Translators and Educators

Scientist Lifetime Contribution
Alcuin (Monk under Charlemagne 735-804 Wrote on astronomy, the Trinity, other.
Einhard c.770-840 palace scholar under Charlemagne
Gerbert c.940-1003 Became Pope Sylvester II in 999
Gerard of Cremona c.1114-1187  
Robert of Chester fl.1140-50 Translated al-Khowarizmi
Manuel Chrysolores c.1355-1415 brought Greek learning to W. Europe
 

Some Western Scientists Who Believed in God

Scientist/ Engineer Lifetime Contribution
Albert of Bollstadt (Albert Magnus) 1193/1206-1280 Alchemist
Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519 physics, art
Nicholas Copernicus 1473-1543 Taught the planets revolved around an immoveable sun
Tycho Brahe 1545-1601 At least a theist
John Napier 1550-1617 Discoverer of logarithms, he was a strong Protestant who in 1594 wrote, "Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of Saint John"
Francis Bacon 1561-1626 scientific method
Galileo Galilei 1564-1642 telescope, gravity, solar system
Johann Kepler 1571-1626 planet's elliptical orbits
William Harvey 1578-1657 circulation of blood. At least a theist.
Puritans 1600-1700 A higher percentage of Puritans were in the English Royal Society than in the general population
Athanasius Kircher 1601-1680 Jesuit who anticipated the germ theory and wrote of Noah's flood
John Wilkins 1614-1672 scientist and clergyman who wrote how Noah's ark would be of adequate size to fit all of the animals.
Walter Charleton 1619-1707 President of the Royal College of Physicians who wrote on the flood and miracles
Blaise Pascal 1623-1662 math, fluid flow
Robert Boyle 1627-1691 Boyle's law - chemistry. Learned Hebrew, Greek, Syriac. Founded the Boyle lectures to prove Christianity vs. atheists, theists, pagans, Jews, and Muslims.
John Ray 1627-1705 natural history
Nicolaus Steno 1631-1686 stratigraphy
Thomas Burnet 1635-1715 geologist and clergyman
Nicolas Lemery 1645-1715 chemist who converted to Catholicism
Sir William Petty 1623-1687 statistics, economics
Christiaan Huygens 1629-1695 Huygen's Principle. At least a theist
Isaac Barrow 1630-1677 Cambridge math prof. who taught Newton. He later retired to teach God's Word
Robert Hooke 1635-1703 physicist and geologist. Hooke's Law of elasticity. At least a theist
Increase Mather 1639-1723 son of Cotton Mather, astronomer on comets, theologian, and one of the first presidents of Harvard.
Nehemiah Grew 1641-1712 physician and botanist. Protestant who wrote on the unique creative design of plants and animals.
Isaac Newton 1642-1727 Co-inventor of calculus, gravity, Newton's 3 laws
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz 1646-1716 co-inventor of calculus, and anticipated Boolean algebra
John Flamsteed 1646-1719 Founded the Greenwich observatory
William Derham 1657-1735 ecology
Cotton Mather 1662-1727 published treatises on "animacules" causing smallpox, and President of Harvard
John Woodward 1665-1728 paleontology
John Harris 1666-1719 mathematician, clergyman, Wrote an English dictionary 1704
William Whiston 9 Dec 1667-22 Aug 1752 succeeded Isaac Newton at Cambridge. Wrote on flood geology. Translated Josephus and was an Arian like Newton. He thought the Tatars were the lost tribes, and the Millennium would start in 1766.
John Hutchinson 1674-1737 paleontologist who wrote on the flood. Also studied Hebrew.
Bayes 1702-1761 Probability, Presbyterian minister
Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790 Believed in God, unsure about Christ's divinity, had a mistress, was perhaps the last person who could know all of science.
Carolus Linnaeus 1707-1778 taxonomy-classified life
Leonard Euler 1707-1783 mathematician and physicist
Gustavus Brander 1720-1787 paleontologist who wrote on the flood
Jean Deluc 1727-1817 Coined the word geology. He and his father invented the barometer. Wrote of a worldwide flood.
Richard Kirwan 1733-1812 Mineralogy
Joseph Townsend 1738-1816 English geologist and clergyman published much of William Smith's work
William Herschel 1738-1822 discovered Uranus, galactic astronomy
Antoine Lavoisier 1743-1794 A Catholic
James Parkinson 1755-1824 perforated appendix, Parkinson's disease, wrote on the flood and coal from plants
Alessandro Volta 1745-1827 first electric battery; Christian
William Kirby 1759-1850 entomologist and English clergyman
Benjamin Barton 1766-1815 physician, biologist, recent creationist
Thomas Malthus 1766-1834 economics, over-population, clergyman
John Dalton 9/15/1766-7/17/1844 atomic theory, Dalton's law of gases. Quaker
Georges Cuvier 1769-1832 comparative anatomy
Samuel Miller 1770-1840 Presbyterian minister and influential science writer chronicling the 18th century,
Thomas Young 1773-1829 double-slit experiment
Charles Bell 1774-1842 anatomist and surgeon
Andre Marie Ampere 1775-1836 father of electrodynamics
John Kidd 1775-1851 chemical synthetics
Hans Christian Oersted 1777-1851 electromagnetism
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss 1777-1855 Gauss's Law
Humphrey Davy 1778-1829 Thermokinetics, safety lamp
Benjamin Silliman 1779-1864 mineralogy, geology, founded the American Journal of Science
Peter Mark Roget 1779-1869 physician and physiologist, Roget's Thesaurus
Thomas Chalmers 1780-1847 social scientist, professor of theology, popularized the "gap theory"
David Brewster 1781-1868 optical mineralogy, kaleidoscope, opposed Darwinism
William Buckland 1784-1856 geologist and priest in the Church of England
William Prout 1785-1850 food chemistry
Adam Sedgwick 1785-1873 Named Cambrian and Devonian periods. A friend of Darwin but against evolutionary ideas, saying the result would be harmful.
Augustin L. Cauchy 1789-1857 Developed infinitesimal calculus and studied permutation groups. He was friends with Lagrange and Laplace.
George Boole 1815-1864 Irish mathematician. He developed Boolean algebra
Michael Faraday 1791-1867 Electromagnetics
Sam. F.B. Morse 1791-1872 Telegraph
John Herschel 1792-1871 son of William, he found 500 nebulas
Charles Babbage 1792-1871 Computer science, Operations research, Opthamaloscope, mathematical analysis of Biblical miracles
Edward Hitchcock 1793-1864 geologist in Mass. And Vermont, against Darwinism
William Whewell 1794-1866 anemometer
Joseph Henry 1797-1866 Electric motor, galvanometer; http://siarchives.si.edu
Richard Owen 1804-1892 zoology, paleontology, non-Christian theist against Darwinism
Matthew Maury 1806-1873 oceanography
Louis Agassiz 1807-1873 glaciers, fish, most famous biologist behind Darwin
Henry Rogers 1808-1866 geology of the Appalachians, wrote of the universal flood
James Glaisher 1809-1903 Founded the British Meteorological Society
Phillip H. Gosse 1810-1888 Ornithologist. Plymouth Brethren, said the earth was young, but fossils and sediments created with appearance of age
Henry Rawlinson 1810-1895 deciphered Behistun inscription
James Simpson 1811-1870 anesthesiology, gynecology
James Dana 1813-1895 President of the Geological Society of America, theistic evolutionist
Joseph Henry Gilbert 1817-1901 agricultural chemist, apposed Darwinism
James Joule 1818-1889 A unit of energy is named after him
Thomas Anderson 1819-1874 discovered pyridine, opposed Darwinism
George Gabriel Stokes 1819-1903 Viscosity and Stokes Law in fluid flow
Charles Piazzi Smyth 1819-1900 Astronomer, studied Egyptian pyramids. Weird guy influential in Anglo-Israelism error
John William Dawson 1820-1899 Canadian geologist and old-earth Creationist
Gregor Mendel 1822-1884 Mendelian genetics
Louis Pasteur 1822-1895 Bacteriology, biochemistry, sterilization, immunology. Opposed Evolution
Henri Fabre 1823-1915 entomology of living insects
Lord Kelvin (William Thompson) 1824-1907 A unit of temperature is named after him, Atlantic cable
William Huggins 1824-1910 astral spectrometry
Bernhard Riemann (Georg F.B. Riemann) 1826-1866 non-Euclidean geometries, Riemann space
Joseph Lister 1827-1912 antiseptic surgery
Balfour Stewart 1828-1887 electricity in ionosphere
Joseph Clerk Maxwell 1831-1879 Maxwell's law in electrodynamics, statistical thermodynamics
P. G. Tait 1831-1901 vector analysis
Josiah Gibbs 1839-1903 chemical thermodynamics
Osborne Reynolds 1842-1912 Reynold's Number in fluid flow
Sir William Abney 1843-1920 Interstellar molecules, son of a clergyman
Alexander MacAlister 1844-1919 Professor of Anatomy at Cambridge
A.H. Sayce 1845-1933 Expert on the Hittites
John Bell Pettigrew 1848-1894 President of the Royal Medical society. Allowed for evolution and design
George Romanes 1848-1894 biologist, physiologist. Christian, personal friend of Darwin, lost his faith, returned to Christianity, unclear if a theistic evolutionist or creationist.
Lord Rayleigh (John Strutt) 1849-1919 Fluid flow, successor to Maxwell at Cambridge
John Ambrose Fleming 1849-1945 electronics, electron tube, thermionic valve
Edward H. Maunder 1851-1928 astronomer at Greenwich
William Mitchell Ramsay 1851-1939 One of the two greatest archaeologists. Liberal who became a conservative Christian
Sir William Ramsay (born in Glasgow) 1852-1916 discovered argon, isotopic chemistry, transmuting elements. Founded the Indian Institute of Technology
Howard A. Kelly 1858-1943 Gynecology/Obstetrics prof. at Johns Hopkins. Wrote A Scientific Man and His Bible.
George Washington Carver 1864-1943 authority on peanuts and sweet potatoes at the Tuskegee Institute
Wilbur and Orville Wright 1867-1912, 1871-1948 First successful flight 12/17/1903. Wilbur assisted his father in legal work for the Church of the United Brethren in Christ
Robert A. Millikan 1868-1953 1923 Nobel (physics)
Douglas Dewar 1875-1957 Wrote books on evolution prior to being a creationist Christian
Paul Lemoine 1878-1940 ex-Evolutionist and President of the Geological Society of France
Albert Einstein 1879-1955 non-practicing Jew who firmly believed in God
Charles Stine 1882-1954 An organic chemist with DuPont. Wrote the booklet, "A Chemist and His Bible"
A. Rendle Short 1885-1955 Professor of surgery
L. Merson Davies 1890-1960 Geology, paleontology
Sir Cecil P. G. Wakeley 1892-1979 surgeon, president of the Bible League
Theodosius Dobzhansky 1900-1975 Ukrainian research of fruit flies. A signer of the 1950 UNESCO document, The Race Question, which refuted Nazi racial scientific claims. Wrote Genetics and the Origin of Species. A Russian Orthodox whose belief in God was similar to the Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin's. Dobzhansky criticized the pope's anti-evolutionary views and protestant creationists.
Werner Heisenberg 1901-1976 Uncertain which principle he found
Werner von Braun 1912-1977 Lutheran German. Famous rocket scientist
A.E. Wilder-Smith 1915-1995 Phys. org. chemistry. 70 pubs. and 30 books.
Lane P. Lester Living Wrote Natural Limits to Biological Change
Hugh Ross living astronomer
Michael Denton 1943- living molecular biologist who wrote Evolution : A Theory in Crisis that was influential in the Intelligent Design movement. Later he changed his views and believed more in evolution
Charles Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, Clarence Meninga living molecular biologists. Authored The Mystery of Life's Origin
Thomas G. Barnes living wrote Origin and Destiny of the Earth's Magnetic Field
William A. Dembski living math, Intelligent Design
Robert Newman living Intelligent Design
Dean H. Kenyon living Biology, Biophysics
Jeffrey P. Schloss living ecology, evolutionary biology, Int. Design
Jonathan Wells living cell biology
Howard J. Van Till living astronomer, wrote The Fourth Day
Davis A. Young living old-earth geologist, wrote Christianity & The Age of the Earth.
Creation Research Society 1963: 10 scientists Over 700 scientists
H.S. Lipson quoted in 1980 physicist. "In fact, evolution became, in a sense, a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to "Bend" their observations to fit with it. .. To my mind, the theory [evolution] does not stand up at all.

Some of this was taken from Morris, Henry. Men of Science Men of God : Great Scientists Who Believed the Bible, revised edition. Master Books. 1988. the AskJeeves.com Web site, Encyclopedia Britannica, and the World Almanac Book of Facts.

 

Non-Theistic Scientists / Engineers

 

To balance things out, here are a few of the non-Theistic Scientists / Engineers

Scientist lifetime Contribution
Rene Descartes (pronounced (de CART) 1596-1650 man of science, philosopher. Immoral, could not stand a God who watched his private life
Joseph Priestley 1733-1804 chemistry of gases. Unitarian minister. Learned Sumerian, Syriac, Arabic among other languages. Invented soda water. Believed in phlogiston.
Charles Darwin 1809-1882 Theory of Evolution. Someone started the rumor that he converted on his deathbed, but his letters and his son's testimony prove that false.
Karl Marx 1818-1883 communism, economic theory. The world has not been the same since.
Sigmund Freud 1856-1939 People only have three drives: self preservation, sexual gratification, and self-destruction. (Love for God and others are excluded)
Alfred Adler 1870-1937 People often motivated by a sense of inferiority
Karl Jung 1875-dead psychologist
Margaret Sanger 1883-1966 Overt racist who founded Planned Parenthood
Julian Huxley 1887-1975 paleontology
H. S. Shelton    
R.A. Fisher 1890-1962 Believed in eugenically improving the human race by discouraging inferior people from having children
Sewall Wright 1889-1988 Worked with R.A. Fisher and J.B.S. Haldane on theoretical population genetics. Developed the inbreeding coefficient.
J. B. S. Haldane 1892-1964 biochemist, geneticist. Worked on population genetics
Margaret Mead 1901-1978 Her research on the "free sex" in the Pacific has been largely discredited as dishonest. Before this, her results had a wide impact.
Linus Pauling 1901-1994 1954 Nobel applied quantum mech. To chemistry. Affiliated with the Unitarians
Tyndall    
Ernst Mayr 1904-2005 Paleontology
Abraham Maslow 1908-1970 psychologist, Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Isaac Asimov 1920-1992 Influential science writer
George C. Williams 1926- Uniformitarian. Taught marine vertebrate zoology
Niles Eldredge 1943- paleontology, Jointly proposed Punctuated Equilibrium
Stephen J. Gould 1941-2002 paleontology, Jointly proposed Punctuated Equilibrium
Richard Dawkins 1941- Uniformitarian
Maynard Smith 1920-2004 Uniformitarian
Stanley   Punctuated Equilibrium
Elisabeth Vrba   Punctuated Equilibrium. Turnover pulse hypothesis
A.G. Cairns-Smith -1982- Wrote Genetic Takeover and the Mineral Origins of Life
Michael Charney   anthropology, zoology
Sidney Fox    
William Shockley 1910-1989 Transistors
Louis W. Alvarez 1911-1988 1935 Nobel prize, impact theory for dinosaur extinction
Hubert P. Yockey 1915- Wrote The Mathematical Foundations of Molecular Biology. Worked with Oppenheimer on the Manhattan project. Very critical of origin of life experiments
Richard Feynman 1918-1988 Shared 1965 Nobel prize in physics
Leslie Orgel 1927-2007 British biochemist
Donald Johanson and Tim White   Paleontologists who discovered "Lucy"
H. Gutfreund   Wrote Biochemical Evolution
Stephen Hawking Living  
Louis and Mary Leakey    
Albert L. Lehninger   Wrote the textbook Biochemistry
Cyril Ponnamperuma 1923-1994 biochemist
Stanley Miller 1930-2007 Experiments on the origin of life
Carl Sagan 1934-1996 Science writer, host of "The Cosmos". Ex-husband of Lynn Margulis
Lynn Margulis 1938- Theory of Eukaryotic organelles. ex-wife of Carl Sagan
Philip Kitcher 1947- Wrote Abusing Science : The Case Against Creationism
G. G. Simpson    
Geoffrey Zubay   Wrote textbook in 1983
R. Lohrmann    
F. Clark    
R.L.M. Synge    

 

Scientists with Other Beliefs

Rudolph Virchow 1821-1902 pathology, anti-evolutionist, but unsure of his views on God
George Wald 1906-1997 evolutionist with admittedly impossible beliefs. 1967 Nobel Prize
Francis Crick 1916-2004 life starting is "almost a miracle" Panspermia
Ilya Prigogine 1917-2003 evolution highly improbable, even over billions of years.. 1977 Nobel prize in chemistry
Robert Jastrow 1925-2008 agnostic astronomer. Wrote in God and the Astronomers Big Bang theory points to God
Michael Behe 1952- non-theist, Intelligent Design proponent
Jeremy Rifkin quoted in 1983 A highly controversial evolutions. "We no longer feel ourselves to be guests in someone else's home and therefore obliged to make our behavior conform with a set of preexisting cosmic rules. It is our creation now. WE make the rules. We establish the parameters of reality.

"Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." 1 Cor. 1:26-27 NIV

 

Scientists with Beliefs Unknown to me

Empedocles c.B.C. - c.430 B.C. Came up with four kinds of matter: air, earth, fire, water
Johann Gutenberg c.1397-c.1468 printing press
Georg Bauer (Agricola) 1494-1555 mining and metallurgy book
Andreas Vesalius 1514-1603 Anatomist
William Gilbert 1540/4-1603 electricity and magnetism
Henri Poincare 1854-1912  
Arrhenius   
Marie and Pierre Curie   Shared 1903 Nobel prize
Laplace    
Legendre    
Edmund Halley 1656-1742 At 22 years old one of the most renowned astronomers
Jean Le Rond d'Alembert 11/1717-1783 French mathematician and philosopher. Figured out the precession of equinoxes
Marcello Malpighi 1628-1694 used the microscope to view capillaries and glands
Daniel Bernoulli 1700-1782 Bernoulli's principle
Henry Cavendish 1731-1810 Measured Newton's gravitational constant
Charles Augustin de Coulomb 1736-1806 elasticity
Joseph-Louis Lagrange 1736-1813 prof. of geometry at an artillery academy when he was 18. Analytic al mechanics
James Watt 1736-1819 steam engine
Claude Louis Berthollet 1748-1822  
Antoine Francois de Fourcroy 1755-1809  
James Smithson 1765-1829 English Chemist and mineralogist. Founded the Smithsonian Institution
Joseph Fourier 1768-1830 heat diffusion
Jean-Baptiste Biot 1774-1862 light polarization
Amadeo Avogadro 1776-1856 Avogadro's number
David Brewster 1781-1868 Brewster's Law of light
Augustin-Jean Fresnel 1788-1827 transverse nature of light
Georg Ohm 1789-1854 Ohm's Law V = IR
Felix Savart 1791-1841 electromagnetism
Gabriel Lame 1795-1870 mathematical Lame's functions
Sadi Carnot 1796-1832 thermodynamics
Joseph Henry 1797-1878 electromagnetics
Christian Doppler 1803-1853 sound waves
Wilhelm E. Weber 1804-1891 sensitive magnetometers
William Hamilton 1805-1865 Hamiltonian classical mechanics
Johann von Lamont 1805-1879 astronomer and magnetician
Karl Weierstrass 1815-1897  
Armand-Hippolyte-Louis Fizeau 1819-1896 First measured the speed of list
Jean-Bernard-Leon Foucault 1819-1868 accurately measured the speed of light
Hermann von Helmholtz 1821-1894 First Law of Thermodynamics: energy is conserved
Rudolf Clausius 1822-1888 Second Law of Thermo. entropy never decreases
Joseph Leidy 1823-1891 anatomy
Gustav Lirchhoff 1824-1887 Three laws of spectral analysis
Johann Balmer 1825-1898 Hydrogen spectrum
Bayer   chemist
Enrico Fermi 1901-1954 atomic physics
Navier   fluid dynamics
Lamarck   Lamarckian example: giraffes constantly stretching their necks caused offspring to have longer necks
Sir Edward Frankland 1825-1899 chemist, valence theory
Percy Faraday Frankland 1858-1946 son of Edward
William Suddards Franklin 1863-1930  
Emile-Michel-Hyacinthe Lemoine 1840-1912 mathematician and engineer. Also a musician
Sir James George Frazier 1854-1941 anthropologist, author of The Golden Bow
Irving Langmuir 1881-1857 Nobel prize chemist
Rumford    
Charles Friedel 1932-1899 Chemist
James Mason Crafts   Chemist
Johann Heinrich Lambert 1827-1777 mathematician, physicist, astronomer, proved the irrationality of pi, hyperbolic trig functions, theorems on conics, theoretical photometry
Joseph WIlson Swan 1828-1914 carbon-filament incandescent light
Alfred Nobel 1833-1896 Started the Nobel prizes, with the money he made from inventing dynamite. 355 patents.
Joseph Stefan 1835-1893 blackbody radiation
Ernst Mach 1838-1916 Refused to believe in atoms
Joseph Dewar 1842-1923 Liquified nitrogen, Dewar flask
Charles Lapworth 1842-1920 catalogued Ordovician strata
Ludwig Boltzmann 1844-1906 statistical mechanics
Georg Cantor 1845-1918  
WIllard F. Libby 1908-1980 1960 Nobel prize for radiocarbon dating
Roland Eotvos 1848-1919 gravitational and inertial mass equivalent
Roderick Murchison   geologist
Sir Horace Lamb 1849-1934 math, hydrodynamics, wave theory
Ferdinand Georg Frobenius 1849-1917 mathematician
Oliver Heaviside 1850-1925 electromagnetism, operational calculus, vectors
Geroge Francis FitzGerald 1851-1901 Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction for Michelson-Morley experiment
John Henry Poiynting 1852-1914 Poynting's vector for electromagnetic waves
Henri Poincare 1854-1912  
Janne Rydberg 1854-1919  
Edwin H. Hall 1855-1938  
Heinrich Hertz 1857-1894 electromagnetism
Nikola Tesla 1857-1943 alternating current
MORETOCOME    
Alexander Mikhailovich Liapunov 1857-1918 mathematician
Sir William Maddock Bayliss 1860-1924 physiologist
William Shirley Bayley 1861-1943 geologist
Robert Thompson Leiper 1881- biologist
Gilbert Newton Lewis 1875-1946 Lewis acids/bases
Bronsted   chemist
Isidor Isaac Rabi 1898-1988 1944 Nobel Magnetic resonance
Otto Stern 1888-1969 1943 Nobel - magnetic moment of a proton
Robert Shapiro   biochemist, wrote Origins : A Skeptics Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth
Chandra Wickamasinghe    
Ignaz Semmelweiss   reduced hospital mortality by having patients wash hands in chlorinated lime
Fred Hoyle    
Morowitz    
Edward Jenner 1749-1823 smallpox vaccine from cowpox. Son of a clergyman, he vaccinated many poor people for free
Max Born    
Silliam Smith 1769-1839 Father of English geology
Charles Laveran 1845-1922 discovered the plasmodian that causes malaria
Nicola Tesla 1832-1943  
Ernest Rutherford 1871-1933  
Georg Simon Ohm 1787-1854  
Charles de Coulomb 1736-1806  
Joseph Henry 1797-1878  
Neinrich Rudolf Hertz 1857-1894  
James Prescott Joule 1818-1889  
Ernst Mach 1838-1916 physicist who refused to believe in atoms
Glenn T. Seborg 1912-1999 Shared 1951 Nobel prize in chemistry
George Wierstrauss    
Alessandro Volta 1745-1827 Made the first battery
James Watt 1731-1819  
William Eduard Weber 1804-1891  
Fritz Haber   1918 Nobel prize for ammonia synthesis
de Bakey    
Cooley    
Paul Chu    
Albert A. Michelson 1852-1931 Precisely measured the speed of light. Nobel (physics)
Morley    
Willem Einthoven 1860-1927 physiologist who invented the electrocardiogram
Gotthold Ferdinand Eisenstein 1823-1852 mathematician binary quadratic forms
Walfrid Van Ikman 1874-1954 oceanographer and physicist
Christaan Eijkman 1858-1939 vitamin deficiencies
George Theobald 1859-1934 Pathology. Killed bateria cultures can give immunity
Solomon Lefschetz 1884-1972 Topology
Frederic & Irene Joliot-Curie 1900-1958 & 1897-1956 co-discovered artificial radioactivity
John Cockcroft 1897-1967 co-invented particle accelerator
Anton van Leeuwenhook 1632-1723 made 250 microscopes up to 270X. First to see bacteria, protozoa, rotifers
Tsung Dae Lee (Chinese born American) 1926- Nobel physicist
Maurice H. F. Wilkins 1916- Shared the Nobel prize with Watson and Crick
Fermat   corresponded with Pascal
Jack Kilby   Nobel prize for co-inventing the transistor
Simon Newcout(sp?) 1835-1909 famous astronomer who taught that heavier than air flight was impossible.
Louis-Victor de Broglie   1929 Nobel prize in Physics
Paul Ehrenfest   physicist and Einstein's friend
Wheeler    
WIlliam Gilbert 1544-1603 thought the earth is a giant magnet
Willebrod Snell 1580-1626 Snell's Law of refraction
Joseph J. Thomson   1906 Nobel (physics)
Conrad Lorenz    
Johannes D. van der Waals   1910 Nobel prize
Otto Hahn 1879-1968 1/2 1944 Nobel fission
Alexander Fleming 1881-1955 Observed penicillin
Erwin Schroedinger 1887-1961 Shared 1933 Nobel for atomic theory of wave mechanics
Wallace Hume Carothers 1896-1937 Chemist
John D. Cockroft 1897-1967 Shared 1951 Nobel transmuted elements
Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett 1897-1974 developed the cloud chamber
Howard Walter Florey 1898-1968 co-discovered of penicillin
P.A.M. Dirac    
Wolfgang Pauli 1900-1958 1954 Nobel Paul exclusion principle
Thomas Watson    
Thomas R. Cech   Shared 1989 Nobel prize for self-replicating RNA. Very careful in his speech to not say anything beyond what research demonstrates
Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton 1903-1995 Shared 1951 Nobel for transmuting elements
George Gamow (Russina-American) 1904-1968 nuclear reactions in stars
Otto Frisch 1904-1979 Uranium fission
(Julius) Robert Oppenheimer 1904-1967 Worked on the atom bomb
Emilio Segre 1905-1989 Shared 1959 Nobel for anti-proton
Own Chamberlain 1920- Shared 1959 Nobel for anti-proton
Nikolai Basov (Russian) 1922-2001 Theoretical basis of the maser
Lars Onsager (1931)  
Max K.E.L. Planck   1918 Nobel prize
Neils Bohr 1885-1962 1922 Nobel, electrons orbit in energy states
Hubble    
Wilhelm Roentgen   1901 Nobel prize
Antoine Cesar Becquerel 1788-1878 electrochemistry
Alexandre Becquerel 1820-1891  
Louis Alfred Becquerel 1814-1862  
Antoine Henri Becquerel 1852-1908 Shared 1903 Nobel prize

See www.askjeeves.com/main/famous physicists www.nidlink.com/~jfromm/history.htm


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by Steven M. Morrison, PhD.