Lessons in atheism. Believing scientists
Religion recognizes God as the creator of our world, and science considers the Universe to be a self-developing system. How can you combine opposing views: creationism and evolutionism? How can one objectively analyze reality while still believing that at the beginning of all things there was a miracle, some kind of mystery? We asked these questions to four believing scientists.
They are real explorers. Studying the true nature of phenomena, penetrating the secrets of reality is their daily work. But at the same time, they are believers: some part of them accepts on faith the invisible, irrational, inexplicable. They don't see a contradiction in this. They came to their faith as mature people.
Science is not omnipotent, it cannot explain all the details of this world
Our heroes are convinced that science is not omnipotent, that it cannot explain all the details of this world, and that there remains something in it beyond the control of our minds. They do not belittle the importance of science, but it is faith that gives them spiritual support in their search for the essence of life, and everyone defines it in their own way.
This is the “internal moral guard” (for Marklen Konurbaev); “philosophy of life” (for Nikolai Vereshchagin); “the core of life” (for Alexander Shtanko); “that which gives a sense of the meaning of life” (for Maria Timofeeva). They chose the path between unconditional trust in science and literal interpretation of sacred texts. And they try to say that you can believe in God while at the same time fighting for the progress of human knowledge.
“This is the basis of my life philosophy”
Nikolai Vereshchagin, mathematician, professor at Moscow State University, Orthodox
“Without a doubt, the world is much more complex than our scientific imagination can imagine. It seems to me, for example, that the idea that life and consciousness could arise and progress as a result of purely random processes is extremely dubious. And without belief in an afterlife, existence in this world seems simply meaningless to me.
Science builds models of the surrounding world, accessible to us in sensations, using scientific methods. I value them highly and use scientific models wherever possible. But they have their limits. With their help it is difficult to build a good model of, say, a family. Therefore, on the question of how to act correctly in some life situation, for example in family life, I will turn to the priest, and not to a scientist.
Faith has become the basis of my life philosophy and therefore guides my actions in everyday life. As for doing science, I believe that unexpected ideas do not come to our minds of their own accord, but are prompted by God or his angels. When I grasp such an idea, I rejoice that my mind is sufficiently mature to perceive it and that I have penetrated the subject well enough.”
“Faith helped me understand the meaning”
Maria Timofeeva, psychoanalyst, Orthodox
“I am a physicist by first education; I graduated from MIPT. But I was sorely lacking other meanings in life, and after a long search I came to psychoanalysis. There was a wonderful illusion that I had found the answers to all my questions.
And in 1991, a tragedy occurred before my eyes - a colleague, a bright young psychologist, drowned. And the entire structure that I had built inside myself collapsed in one moment. I stopped seeing the meaning in psychology and in anything at all. Chance brought me to the city of Kurchatov to the priest Father George Neifakh. I lived with his family for almost a month and went to services with him. We talked about a lot, and, most importantly, we spoke the same language: he himself was a scientist and biologist in the past. This meeting changed my mind. It was as if a puzzle had finally come together inside me.
I accepted the religious path instantly, like an epiphany. It does not contradict my profession: religion and psychology are different spheres of human life. Faith changed my entire value system, coordinate system. I found the meaning in life that I was missing. Of course, I cannot say that I now have answers to all questions about human nature. But the world has definitely become friendlier, its beauty and harmony have opened up to me.
“I study the world to understand the Creator more clearly”
Marklen Konurbaev, philologist, professor at Moscow State University, Muslim
“I study philology. In other words, the art of comprehending meaning in oral and written text. Text for me is a mosaic of timbre changes, emotional contrasts, meanings, words. I peer into their combinations and comprehend the author, hidden from me by the veil of language. The world around is also a text. Understanding it is hampered by the clip quality, abruptness of communication and an overabundance of information that does not make sense. They undermine the stability of life. But here, as in philology, I am looking for harmony and ways to preserve it.
Back in my student years, I sought to understand how understanding of polysemous texts arises. In particular, the Koran. Then the question arose of what the religion of my ancestors – Islam – was for me. Are these just rituals? It turned out that rituals only emphasize the significance of faith, and it itself is deep in the heart.
Gradually, faith became a moral pillar in life. And it does not contradict my scientific views. The Quran predicts many discoveries made by science centuries later. For example, it contains an indication that the Earth is round and describes in detail the development of the human embryo, which amazes modern biologists. What is this if not sacred knowledge transmitted to people by God?
As a Muslim, I take it for granted that the world and everything in it is a manifestation of various properties of God. And as a believing scientist, I try to better study this world with the help of science in order to understand the Creator more clearly. The Koran says: “God balances everything.” I think that this balance is harmony. I am looking for manifestations of God, which means I am trying to achieve harmony. AND this fills my scientific search with deep meaning».
“Now I see life positively”
Alexander Shtanko, physicist, non-denominational believer
“I am a scientist, and also an experimenter, that’s why I could not accept faith without evidence and experimental confirmation. I came to her through a deep ideological crisis.
I had health problems and medicine was powerless. And spiritual practice (close to what is called repentance in Christianity) helped me heal. And this is not the only example of a miracle in my life.
An atheist scientist will say that these are random coincidences. But I am also a scientist and I know how to calculate the probability of such accidents - they are practically excluded. Faith changed my life dramatically. From a state of dejection, pessimism, fear, and the first of them - fear of death - I moved to a very positive, constructive attitude towards everything. Life has gained meaning, I feel that I am constantly changing internally and discovering new things in others.
However, with all due respect to Christianity, I did not become a Christian. It seems to me that the mythological image of God, established 2000 years ago, is difficult to reconcile with the cultural context of our time.
The idea that science can explain everything is misleading. This is a claim to the impossible. Science has no methodology for studying the spiritual world. Although she provides rich images to comprehend it. For example, holography, which I have been doing all my life. As you know, a complete image is displayed at each point of the hologram. Perhaps the Universe is structured according to the holographic principle. This image can also be applied to a person: his spirit is only a particle, but the entire divine world is reflected in it.”
About it
“Proof of God. The Scientist's Arguments" Francis Collins
American geneticist and director of the Human Genome Project Francis Collins was an agnostic in his youth, an atheist at the beginning of his scientific career, and over the years he came to the conclusion that one can “at the same time be a natural scientist who strictly adheres to scientific methods and believe in a God who is interested in each of us personally". In his book, he substantiates why evolutionary theory, like science in general, does not contradict the idea of God (Alpina non-fiction, 2009).
For quite a long time, science has been a cover and complacency for atheists who tell themselves that we are smart people, and therefore we know (believe) that there is no God. And believers, they say, are stupid and dark, that’s why they believe in God. Such misconceptions can be answered with data from opinion polls and a list of names of outstanding scientists of our time who openly declare their faith. First, we need to figure out who believers are and how many there are in our modern society. Let's take Russia as an example. A Levada Center survey from December 2012 gives us many figures, including the fact that 74% of the country’s population consider themselves Orthodox in our country. We won’t talk specifically about other religions for now, but rather let’s take a detailed look at these same “Orthodox” ones. And here another figure is curious - the number of those who confess and receive communion - among Orthodox Christians there are only 7%, i.e. approximately 5% of the total number of Russians. Why did we pay attention to this particular group of people among all Orthodox Christians? Because these are the real Orthodox - those who study religion, study history, heritage, who understand why they need Orthodoxy and the church. No Kirkorov, even if he calls himself Orthodox three times and rents another church for the next christening of his surrogate child, has never been Orthodox. No Major Dymovsky, whose attitude towards Orthodoxy is at the level of “my grandmother baptized me as a child, therefore I am an Orthodox believer, although I don’t know anything else about faith,” is also Orthodox. Well, there are also millions of people who go to light candles so that God or one of the saints will help them solve another problem in life - this is all paganism, which has grown as an outgrowth on Orthodoxy. So, the percentage of deeply religious people of Christian denominations and those who understand their faith has always and everywhere been approximately the same - 5-12%, no more, depending on the place and time. And the rest are like those swayed by the wind - wherever it blows, they incline: today Orthodoxy, and tomorrow horoscopes with Marx and Engels to boot.
Now let's take scientists. It is clear that this question also haunts them. In the United States in the late 90s, a fairly large-scale survey was conducted among scientists from the National Academy of Sciences, where several hundred “luminaries of science” answered the question about faith in God. In addition, these data were used for comparison with similar surveys conducted in 1914 and 1933.
So, we see two things: first, the percentage of believing modern scientists falls exactly within the range of knowledgeable religious people (and if you look at the details of the survey at the link above, you will find out that this percentage varies depending on specialization - from 5.5% for biologists and up to 14.3% for mathematicians, but always within the above limits); second, the number of believing scientists has decreased significantly over the past 84 years.
Scientists are educated people. And if they have questions regarding any important subject, they try to understand it in sufficient detail. Looking at our Russian society, we see that there are not many people who want to understand religion in detail (the above-mentioned 5% of Russians who study religion is a very typical indicator), and a self-respecting scientist will base his position on some objective things, and if he doesn’t want to understand , and he did not come across clear facts by themselves, he will give a negative answer. Therefore, there are approximately the same number of believing scientists (and even a little more) as there are deeply knowledgeable religious people in the whole society.
As for the reduction in the number of religious scientists, this is partly due to the availability of primary and secondary education for the general public. Literally 100-150 years ago, primary education could often only be obtained in a parish school, where a religious subject was also taught (in Russia, for example, it was called “The Word of God”). In fact, the very purpose of the existence of parish schools was to teach literacy so that a person could then independently study the Bible. Hence such a high percentage of believing scientists at the beginning of the last century, but now this figure has simply returned to normal (again, we are talking about Christian countries).
And for starters, a few names of modern scientists who clearly spoke about their religiosity (Christianity):
Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-1884), Austrian biologist, founder of genetics, abbot of the monastery.
Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966), Belgian astronomer and mathematician, priest, creator of the theory of the expanding Universe.
Valentin Voino-Yasenetsky (1877-1961), monastic Luke, Russian doctor, professor, Orthodox bishop, saint. In medicine he is known as a specialist in purulent surgery.
Pavel Florensky (1882-1937), Russian philosopher, scientist who worked in the humanitarian, natural and technical fields, Orthodox priest.
Georg Cantor(1845-1918), German mathematician, creator of set theory.
Max Planck(1858-1947), German physicist. His work “Religion and Natural Science” is noteworthy, at the end of which the following conclusions are made: “Wherever we look, we will never encounter a contradiction between religion and natural science, but, on the contrary, we find complete agreement precisely in the decisive moments. Religion and natural science do not exclude each other, as some people now think or fear, but complement and condition each other...”
Rauschenbakh Boris Viktorovich(1915-2001), Soviet scientist in the field of mechanics and control processes, one of the founders of Russian cosmonautics, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1966).
Yuri Petrovich Altukhov(1936-2006), Soviet and Russian geneticist.
Viktor Antonovich Sadovnichy(1939-), Russian mathematician, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. From 1992 to the present, Rector of Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov.
P We present to your attention a list of scientists (scientists mean people involved in natural sciences and mathematics; we have deliberately narrowed this concept) whose worldview was religious. This list will not add anything new to the debate about science and faith, but it may prevent many people from accepting the false premises that so often interfere with unbiased discussion. If you believe that modern science was founded by humans atheistic, positivist, scientistic or materialistic looks, you will understand that this is not the case. Or if you are convinced that in the modern era a scientist cannot adhere to a religious worldview, you will also understand that this is far from true. Moreover, you will see that science as a method is very closely combined with faith in the Creator in the vast majority of the most significant scientists who carefully mine what we later call scientific knowledge.
Looking at historical works, we will see that much has been said about the harmony between science and faith that existed in the Middle Ages. During this era, a real synthesis took place between science and faith: the first universities were founded, Christian philosophy took shape, which developed into a coherent system, and the scientific method was formulated. The inseparability of these two areas, religious and scientific, faith and reason in the Middle Ages was obvious to almost all thinkers. We will not try here to formulate the approach of medieval thinkers to these problems; we only need to state a fact.
One of the reasons for the end of the worldview of the Middle Ages was the gap between science and faith; they were no longer understood as something interdependent, and apparent contradictions began to arise. Thus, already in the 17th century, people appeared in the scientific community who openly declared their atheistic worldview. We began our review precisely from this time, when a thinking person, one way or another, had to make a choice between a positivist, secular or religious worldview. That is, the religious worldview has ceased to be something taken for granted. It may be objected that at that time the influence of the Church was strong and scientists were forced to at least formally declare themselves believers in order not to be subject to sanctions and not to lose their positions. But already the British scientist Robert Boyle (1627–1691) established lectures designed to protect the Christian faith from "notorious infidels, viz. atheists, deists, pagans, Jews and Muslims". From this we conclude that at that time there were people known for their non-religious worldview, which means that any scientist had a choice. Or if we consider the society of Cardinal Richelieu, Blaise Pascal and Rene Descartes - France of the same 17th century, it is also known about this country that atheistic views were widespread among the nobility. It is known that Pascal tried to challenge these views by writing his famous “Thoughts on Religion and Other Subjects.”
We cannot help but note that almost all of the scientists we named actively defended a religious view of life, and if they were hidden atheists, then, while formally recognizing faith, they would not have taken any active actions. Moreover, atheistic views not only existed, they were recorded even in medieval manuscripts, including ancient Russian ones. And if these views existed and could be expressed under conditions of almost absolute authority of the Church, then it was all the easier to express and defend them when this authority weakened, in the era of secularization, which began approximately in the 16th–17th centuries.
We in no way claim that this list undeniable, and we are not ready to guarantee that each of the listed scientists had a religious worldview; on the contrary, due to a lack of sources, our list is vulnerable to criticism. But nevertheless, in almost every case we try to present arguments in favor of the fact that a particular person adhered (for us it is less important what religion he belonged to and whether he was a believer) of a religious worldview. Moreover, we deliberately did not include in the list people who converted to Christianity at the end of their lives; it was important for us that the person consistently adheres to a certain religious worldview. For example, we did not include John von Neumann, who converted to a Catholic priest before his death, which shocked his friends and which could be interpreted as his conversion, or Anthony Flew, who became a committed deist late in life under the influence of the fine-tuning argument. . To make the list more “reliable,” we tried our best to avoid including in it people whose worldview there is conflicting information: the names of Mendeleev, Pavlov, Einstein, Bohr and many other famous scientists who can be called both religious and non-religious, in our list was not included.
The only thing we would like to show with this list is that, despite modern assurances that positivism(or atheism) And the science go hand in hand, the vast majority of scientists rejected positivism as a worldview adequate to reality. Moreover, many of the scientists we presented were the founders of new fields of science; our list represents almost all time periods, including the modern era and almost all possible scientific disciplines. This begs the question: if people endowed with outstanding abilities to understand reality did not lose their faith, but, on the contrary, were affirmed in it and saw it inseparably from their studies in science, that is, understanding the structure of the universe did not deprive them of faith, then how can one even say that Does science somehow contradict faith?
Thus, although the medieval view of the world left the minds of leading philosophers and thinkers, it found true allies both in the founders of modern science and in the outstanding scientists of a science already established in its foundations. Many modern thinkers tell us that this is impossible. But what will the scientists themselves say, what is their position, and in general, how many are there among all scientists, what is their contribution to science? We tried to answer these questions with this list.
Let us explain its device. The more influential the scientist’s contribution to the development of science, the larger the size of the letters in which his name is written, ranging from 16 to 22 inclusive. This characteristic is quite subjective, but in any case it somehow helps to navigate the list. Next, in the right corner, the foreign language (if we are not talking about Russian or Soviet scientists) name of the scientist is written, after which his years of life are indicated in brackets, and for each discipline the list is sorted by year of birth. After italics the scientist’s faith and the rationale for both his belonging to this faith and his religious worldview as a whole are written. For isolated cases this justification is absent, but in these cases we are almost sure that it is undeniable. Following the justification there is a description of the scientist’s scientific achievements, a justification of his significance for science (no italics). The number of the book (in the list of used literature) to which the reference is being given is indicated in square brackets, and separated by a comma - the page of the publication indicated at the bottom of the page.
List of scientists with a religious worldview
scientists are people who study natural sciences and mathematics
Medicine
Worldview. Anglican. A deeply religious man, on the day of the discovery of the fact that malaria is transmitted to people through mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles, Ross wrote the following verses in his diary:
Worldview. A Catholic, the scientist describes his worldview in his book Reflections on Life: “Jesus knows our world. Unlike the god Aristotle wrote about, He does not despise us. We can turn to Jesus and He answers us. He was a man like us, but at the same time He is God, surpassing all things.” Carrel was involved in research into the miracles and visions at Lourdes, going from disbelieving them to accepting the spiritual reasons for Mary Baillie's healing in 1902 because they could not be rationally explained (from an article in Scientific American) ).
Contribution to science. Biologist and surgeon, pioneer in transplantology, in 1912 received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "work on vascular suture and transplantation of blood vessels and organs."
Worldview. Orthodox, archbishop (since 1946), canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in the host of Russian martyrs and confessors. Voino-Yasenetsky’s worldview is known, among other things, from his letters to his son Mikhail: “in serving God all my joy, my whole life, for my faith is deep. However, I do not intend to leave both medical and scientific work.” or “if you only knew how stupid and limited atheism is, how alive and real communication is with God and those who love him.”
Contribution to science. A physician, he wrote the monograph “Essays on Purulent Surgery,” which became a reference book for doctors. The scientist also made a contribution to anesthesiology, with his monograph “Regional Anesthesia”; he was the first to describe anesthesia of the trigeminal nerve by introducing ethyl alcohol directly into the trunks of its branches, as well as into the gasserian node.
| Joseph Edward Murray | Joseph Edward Murray (1919 - 2012) |
Worldview. A Catholic, in a 1996 interview with the National Catholic Register, Murray said this: “Is the Church hostile to science? As someone who is Catholic and a scientist, I don't notice this. One truth is the truth of revelation, the other is scientific. If one truly believes that creation is very good, there is no harm in studying science. The more we learn about creation and how it came into being, it only adds to the glory of the Lord. Personally, I have never seen any conflict here.”
Contribution to science. Plastic surgeon, co-founder of transplantology. In 1954, Murray became the first surgeon to perform a successful kidney transplant. Scientist awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1990 for his work on organ and cell transplantation. Murray's team is also known for discovering immune suppression drugs.
| Werner Arber | Werner Arber (b. 1929) |
Worldview. Protestant. Since 2011, he has headed the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (the first Protestant to hold this position). Arber wrote that “faith in God helped me solve many questions that arose before me in the course of my life; she helps me find a way out of critical situations.” Arber did not separate his faith from scientific work and drew religious conclusions from his knowledge, for example, he wrote: “The simplest cells need at least several hundred different biological macromolecules for their work. It remains a big mystery to me how such very complex objects, already at that time, were brought together. The possibility of the existence of a Creator, God, seems to me a satisfactory solution to this problem.”
Contribution to science. Microbiologist and geneticist. Received Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1978 for "the discovery of restriction enzymes and their application in molecular genetics."
Geology
| Adam Sedgwick | Adam Sedgwick (1785 - 1873) |
Worldview. Anglican. In the dispute between the conservative wing of the High Church and the more liberal part of the Anglicans, Sedgwick was clearly on the side of the former, and he defended his position quite vociferously. He believed that diverse living organisms emerged through numerous acts of Divine creation over time. In one of his letters he called Darwin’s theory “simply false” and throughout his life he opposed it. Sedgwick believed that physical and moral, metaphysical truths are separate, and that forgetting this truth will lead to monstrous consequences.
Contribution to science. Geologist, one of the founders of this science in its modern understanding. Introduced the concepts of the Devonian and Cambrian periods. He was the first to distinguish between the processes of stratification, fusion and cleavage.
Worldview. Rational theism. Denomination (presumably) - Anglican Church. He was one of the first people to support Darwin's theory of evolution of species. However, it was difficult for him to reconcile her with his faith. In particular, he found it difficult to believe that natural selection was the main force promoting evolution.
Contribution to science. The founder of modern geology, the author of the ideas of actualism and uniformitarianism. “One of the most outstanding scientists of the 19th century” (Brockhaus and Efron). He developed the doctrine of slow and continuous changes in the earth's surface under the influence of constant geological factors.
| Jean Louis Agassiz | Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807 - 1874) |
Worldview. Christian (denomination unknown). Agassiz believed that the Divine Design could be found everywhere in nature, and could not convince himself of the validity of a theory that did not mention this Design. He defined species as "the thought of God" and wrote in his Essay on Classification: "Collected in space and time, all these ideas show not only thought, but also intentionality, power, wisdom, greatness, foresight, omniscience and providence. In a word, all these facts in their natural interconnection loudly proclaim the One God whom man can know, adore and love; and natural history must ultimately become a study of the thoughts of the Creator of the Universe.” Agassiz was a creationist and rejected Darwin's theory from the moment it appeared, drawing on Plato's idealistic philosophy and taking Platonic forms as the basis of biological concepts. Thus, Agassiz was also an idealist.
Contribution to science. One of the founders of glaciology. He was the first to propose a scientific hypothesis that the Earth went through an ice age in the past.
| James Dwight Dana | James Dwight Dana (1813 - 1895) |
Worldview. Protestant. From the source: “Dan's religious beliefs are described as strong and orthodox. He believed that if God wanted to reveal to him the truth of sensory things, then he would reveal it through nature. Dana did not consider the Bible a technical reference book. The scientist’s views on the theory of evolution are interesting, he wrote: “The evolution of life occurred through the formation of some species through others, in accordance with natural ways that we cannot yet clearly understand, and with a small number of cases of supernatural intervention.” Dana defended the view that there were few Divine interventions in the visible world, but he accepted the theory of evolution. In his free time, Dana wrote hymns." In order to harmonize scientific research and the Bible, between 1856 and 1857 he wrote the book “Science and the Bible”.
Contribution to science. Geologist, mineralogist and zoologist. He was a foreign corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1858). He published a chemical classification of minerals and proposed the terms “geosyncline” and “geoanticline”. His textbooks on geology and mineralogy were used throughout the 19th century and even into the next. Charles Darwin praised Dan's work, calling it "wonderfully agreeable" and praising it for its accuracy.
Astronomy
Worldview. Christian. Many of his letters were devoted to discussions of theological issues; Herschel believed that God's Universe was subject to order, a belief that led him to conclude that "an ungodly astronomer must be crazy."
Contribution to science. Astronomer, discovered the planet Uranus and its two main satellites, as well as two satellites of Saturn. He was the first to discover infrared radiation and coin the term “asteroid”. During his life he invented about four hundred telescopes.
Worldview. Catholic. The monk, a Jesuit, was the head of the Pontifical Gregorian University (Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, Universitas Gregoriana Societatis Jesu) for 28 years.
Contribution to science. Among astronomers, Secchi received the unofficial title of “father of astrophysics.” He was a pioneer in the field of astronomical spectroscopy. Thus, Secchi invented the first heliospectograph, stellar spectrograph and telespectroscope. He was the first to experimentally prove that the Sun is a star. He proposed the first classification of stars. He discovered three comets, one of which is named after him. He also proved himself in other areas. In order to measure the transparency of water, he invented the so-called. Secchi disk. While studying the climate of Rome, he invented a “meteograph” to record some type of weather data.
| James Hopwood Jeans | James Hopwood Jeans (1877 - 1946) |
Worldview. Anglican (presumably). in an interview published in The Observer, Jeans was asked: “Do you think life on Earth arose by chance, or do you think it is part of a much larger system?”, to which the scientist replied: “I am inclined to an idealistic theory, according to which the basis is consciousness, and the material Universe is a derivative of consciousness, and not vice versa.”
Contribution to science. Mathematician, physicist and astronomer. He refuted Laplace's theory about the birth of the solar system from a gas cloud. Together with Arthur Eddington, he founded British cosmology. Discovered the Rayleigh-Jeans radiation law for the equilibrium radiation density of an absolutely black body and for the emissivity of an absolutely black body.
Worldview. Quaker. Eddington adhered to the philosophy of idealism in his views on the world; in his book “The Nature of the Physical World,” the scientist claims that the world “the matter of the world is the matter-mind,” that is, “The matter-mind of the world, of course, is nothing more, than the individual conscious mind - the mind-stuff is not scattered in space and time; they are part of the cyclical plan extracted from it” (pp. 276-281). The scientist argued with Albert Einstein and other scientists who support determinism, trying to defend indeterminism: he said that “indeterminism asserts that physical objects have an ontologically indefinite component, and its reason does not lie in the epistemological limitation of the physicist’s understanding. Thus, the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics will be determined not by hidden parameters, but by the very indeterminism in nature.”
Contribution to science. An astrophysicist, during the observation of a solar eclipse in 1919, the scientist was one of the first to receive confirmation of the theory of relativity. Author of the Eddington limit in astronomy (the amount of power of electromagnetic radiation emanating from the interior of a star, at which it is in a state of equilibrium). He calculated the number of protons in the observable Universe, it is named after him, although recently it has been slightly adjusted.
Inventors
Worldview. Calvinist, priest.
Contribution to science. In 1816, the scientist invented the Stirling engine, trying to protect workers from burns, and at that time the theoretical basis for such an engine did not yet exist (it appeared only in 1825, in the works of S. Carnot). He also invented a number of optical instruments.
Worldview. A Christian, interested in the relationship between science and faith, donated funds to provide lectures on the “connection between the Bible and Science.” The first dispatch was sent by telegraph by the scientist himself, her words were: “Wonderful are Your works, Lord.”
Contribution to science. Invented the electromagnetic writing telegraph (the so-called “Morse apparatus”) and Morse code. In addition to these inventions, Morse also had other lesser known ones, such as a marble cutting machine that could carve three-dimensional sculptures from marble and stone.
Worldview. Deist; Although the scientist was often called an atheist, in one personal letter the scientist refuted these speculations. It was about an article in the New York Times magazine in which Edison stated that “nature, not the gods of religions, created us.” Edison wrote: “You have misunderstood this article because you have come to the conclusion that it denies the existence of God. This denial does not exist; what you call God, I call Nature, the Supreme Mind that controls matter.”
Contribution to science. Inventor, author of 1093 patents, including: battery for an electric car, electric motor, ticker machine, cinema, mechanical voice recorder. His discoveries subsequently paved the way for mass and television communications.
Worldview. Orthodox. He was interested in the topic of the relationship between science and religion, and outlined his thoughts in the preface to the famous collection “Science & Religion: A Symposium,” which was rejected by both secularists and conservative Christians. He also wrote a book, New Reformation: From Physical to Spiritual Realities, 1928, from which it is quite clear that he is a Christian, and he himself writes about it (p. 267).
Contribution to science. Physicist, inventor. One of the founders of the National Aeronautics Advisory Committee, the predecessor of NASA (NASA). He came up with a way to increase the transmission range of telegraph and telephone messages via communication cables by artificially increasing their inductance, called “pupinization.”
Worldview. Catholic. Simeon Popov in his book “Why I Believe in God” quotes the scientist: “Every step taken by science brings us new surprises and achievements. And yet, science is like the dim light of a flickering lantern in a deep and dense forest through which humanity strives to find its way to God. Only faith can lead us to the light and serve as a bridge between man and the Absolute. I'm proud to be a Christian. I believe not only as a Christian, but also as a scientist. A wireless device can transmit a message across the wilderness. In prayer, the human spirit can send invisible waves into infinity, which will reach their goal before God.” The fact that Marconi is a practicing Catholic can also be concluded from his letters to his wife.
Contribution to science. Discovered Marconi's law and invented a long-distance radio transmitter. He is considered, along with Popov, to be the inventor of radio. Winner of the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics"for distinguished contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy."
| Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky | (1889 - 1972) |
Worldview. Orthodox, he was a deeply religious person. Sikorsky wrote: “With regard to the Lord's Prayer, I am a fundamentalist, ready to take every word and sentence in its direct and full meaning. Historical evidence does not cast doubt on the identity of the Author of the Prayer (...).” Thanks to the works of Sikorsky, the St. Nicholas Church was founded in Stratford, whose parishioner Igor Ivanovich was until the end of his days.
Contribution to science. Inventor and aircraft designer. He invented the first in the world: a four-engine airplane, a passenger airplane, a transatlantic seaplane, and his most famous invention - a serial single-rotor helicopter. In the USA he was awarded the medal “For scientific and technical achievements in the field of fundamental sciences”.
| Wernher von Braun | Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun (1912 - 1977) |
Worldview. Lutheran. The scientist denied the evolutionary theory, you can find the following quote from von Braun: “To force yourself to believe only one conclusion, which states that everything in the Universe arose by chance, means thereby going against the objectivity of science itself.” Von Braun did not view his work as a glorification of human achievement, and he is credited with saying: “Human spaceflight is a great achievement, but it has opened only a small door for humanity through which we can look at the extraordinary richness of the cosmos. And the secrets of the Universe that we can observe through this viewing slit should only confirm faith in the Creator.”
Contribution to science. Led the team that developed the V-2 rocket. His discoveries led to the creation of the Saturn V rocket, which carried Americans to the Moon.
| Boris Viktorovich Rauschenbach | (1915 - 2001) |
Worldview. Orthodox. He studied theology, reverse perspective, and wrote many works on science and faith. In one of the interviews, the scientist said: “But there is no such thing as a scientific worldview, this is nonsense and bullshit! Science and religion do not contradict each other; on the contrary, they complement each other. Science is the kingdom of logic, the religion of extra-logical understanding. A person receives information through two channels. Therefore, the scientific worldview is a bitten worldview, and we need not a scientific, but a holistic worldview. Chesterton said that religious feeling is akin to falling in love. And love cannot be defeated by any logic. There is another aspect. Let's take a decent, educated atheist. Without realizing it, he follows the institutions that arose in Europe in the last two thousand years, that is, the Christian rules.” Boris Viktorovich was not a materialist and criticized reductionism, the reduction of all objective reality to matter: “Trying to understand the Universe using analytical methods, some physicists felt the impossibility of explaining it only from the point of view of materialism. I also believe that materialism, which teaches that matter is primary and everything else is secondary, is nonsense. Academician Sakharov, whom I consider a man of exceptional honesty and courage, wrote that there is something outside of matter and its laws that warms the world; this feeling can be called religious. The gene, the carrier of hereditary information, is material. But it itself is inexplicable from a materialistic point of view. What is more important - information or its carrier? Consequently, what is immaterial objectively exists in the world.”
Contribution to science. Mechanical physicist, one of the founders of Russian cosmonautics. He carried out a unique job of photographing the far side of the moon. Under his leadership, systems for orientation and flight correction of interplanetary automatic stations “Mars”, “Venera”, “Zond”, communication satellites “Molniya”, automatic and manual control of spacecraft piloted by humans were created.
| Raymond Vahan Damadyan | Վահան Դամադյան (born 1936) |
Worldview. Christian. He was a convinced creationist. According to many scientists, it was because of this that Damadian did not receive the Nobel Prize at one time, although his contribution to the invention of MRI is generally recognized by the scientific community. Many world-famous scientists came out in support of it.
Contribution to science. He is one of the inventors of magnetic resonance imaging. On July 3, 1977, he performed the first human scan using MRI. B Received the first patent in the field of magnetic resonance imaging for the diagnosis of malignant neoplasms. In 2001, he received the Lemelson-MIT Prize as the person “who invented MRI.”
Worldview. Lutheran. In his talk on the intersection of science and religion at Authors@Google, Knuth mentions the harsh reaction that followed after he wrote the book 3:16 Illuminated Biblical Texts (in this book one in sixteen The verse of the third chapter of each biblical book is accompanied by a calligraphic design), dedicated to the Bible, which he first presented to the public at a meeting of the Association of Christians in Mathematical Sciences, he also explained that throughout his life he was a religious person. When writing one of his books, he was advised to cut out the part where he argued that “computer science” is not everything, although the audience at MIT reacted adequately to this.
Contribution to science. The programmer, who wrote the famous multi-volume “The Art of Programming,” is considered the “father” of algorithm analysis. He is also known as the creator of the TeX and METAFONT publishing systems, used by scientists around the world.
Worldview. Protestant, New Life Church. He was engaged in Bible translation. Wall's Christianity also influenced the language he invented, Perl. So the name itself is taken from Matt. 13:46, the names of some functions are also taken from the Holy Scriptures. Wall has spoken openly about his faith at various conferences. So, he spoke directly about it at the Perl Conference in August 1997.
Contribution to science. Programmer, famous as the creator of the Perl programming language and the Usenet client for the patch program.
Chemistry
Worldview. An Anglican (presumably), an active missionary, he established the Boyle Lectures, the purpose of which was to defend the Christian faith against “notorious infidels, namely, atheists, deists, pagans, Jews and Muslims.” In 1680 - 1685 he personally financed the publication of the Bible, both the New and Old Testaments in Irish.
Contribution to science. One of the founders of modern chemistry, author of the Boyle-Mariotte law.
Worldview. Orthodox, in his "Appearance of Venus" the scientist shows the differences between the tasks of religion and the tasks of science; he also has the following thought: “The Creator gave the human race two books. The first is the visible world... The second book is Holy Scripture... Both generally confirm us not only in the existence of God, but also in His unspeakable benefits. It is a sin to sow tares and discord among them.” Lomonosov also wrote two poems: “Morning reflection on God’s majesty” and “Evening reflection on God’s majesty in the event of the great northern lights.”
Contribution to science. He came up with his own molecular-kinetic theory of heat, laid the foundations of physical chemistry, discovered the presence of an atmosphere on Venus, together with Brown was the first to obtain mercury in the solid state, and invented the first prototype of a helicopter (independently of L. Davinci).
| Antoine Laurent Lavoisier | Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier (1743 - 1794) |
Worldview. Catholic, defended the Christian faith from people who appealed to science in their attacks; biographer Edouard Grimaud reports of him: “He held firmly to his faith.” To Edward King, who sent him his discursive work, Lavoisier replied: “In defending revelation and Holy Scripture, you act nobly, and it is very surprising that you use the same weapons for defense that you once used for attack.”
Contribution to science. Biologist and chemist, considered the founder of modern chemistry. Antoine came up with names for oxygen, hydrogen and silicon. Helped create the metric system and helped reform chemical nomenclature by writing down the first list of chemical elements. One of his discoveries is that despite the fact that matter can change its shape, its mass remains constant (the law of conservation of mass). He studied the composition of water and air, which in his time were considered single elements, Lavoisier showed that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen, and air of nitrogen and oxygen. In biology, a scientist first used a calorimeter to measure the heating produced by a guinea pig's respiration.
Worldview. Quaker. He led a decent and modest life.
Contribution to science. Developed modern atomic theory, studied color blindness, a phenomenon named after the scientist. Formulated Dalton's law about the sum of partial pressures.
| Jean Baptiste Dumas | Jean Baptiste Andre Dumas (1800 - 1884) |
Worldview. Catholic. He was a believer throughout his life. He defended the Christian faith against the attacks of materialism, examples of this can be found in his numerous speeches: in an address to Berard, a memorable speech dedicated to Faraday, and in many other speeches.
Contribution to science. Chemist, founder of organic chemistry. Got a method for determining atomic and molecular mass. He developed a volumetric method (“Dumas method”) for determining the amount of nitrogen in organic compounds. He established that fats are esters, established the composition of acetone, laid down ideas about the class of alcohols, and put forward the first theory of types. He established the existence of the formic acid series (the first homologous series in organic chemistry) and determined the empirical formula of indigo.
Worldview. Christian. The German-language magazine “Cicero” contains an interview with the scientist on November 21, 2007, which contains the following words (literally): “Oh, yes, I believe in God (...) I am a Christian and I try to live like a Christian (...) I read the Bible very often and I try to understand it.”
Contribution to science. Works in the field of surface chemistry, in 2007 received Nobel Prize in Chemistry for research into chemical processes on solid surfaces. Gerhard was elected a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2011.
Worldview. Christian. Smalley converted to Christianity shortly before his death (several years), but unlike others, he began to adhere to the Christian worldview consistently. The scientist was an old-earth creationist, in one of his letters he writes: “I recently returned to the Church, focusing on understanding what makes Christianity so vital and influential in the lives of billions of people today, 2000 years have passed since the death and resurrection Christ's. Although I suspect I will never fully understand it, I am now inclined to believe that the answer is quite simple: it is true. God created the Universe 13.7 billion years ago and since then necessity has involved Him in the affairs of His creations. Only God knows for sure the purpose of the Universe, but unusually quickly, modern science is beginning to understand that the Universe was incredibly finely tuned for the emergence of life. Somehow, we are urgently involved in His plan. Our job, to the best of our ability, is to comprehend this plan, love each other, and help Him finish everything”; the scientist wrote: “Evolution has just received a fatal blow. After reading The Origin of Life with my background in chemistry and physics, the impossibility of evolution is completely clear. The new book “Who is Adam?” is the silver bullet that will kill the evolutionary model.” In a speech at Tuskegee University, he referred to the struggle between creationism and evolutionism and stated: "The burden of proof lies with those who do not believe that 'Genesis' is right, and there was a creation, and the Creator is still involved."
Contribution to science. Chemist and physicist, received Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1996 for "the discovery of a new form of carbon, fullerenes." He is sometimes called the “father of modern nanotechnology” (as he is called in one of the resolutions of the US Senate).
Worldview. Catholic. The magazine “The Catholic Spirit” (October 24, 2012) contains an interview with the scientist. He says, “The entire time I lived in Little Falls, I attended Mass at St. Mary's. Mary and Monsignor Keaveney was our priest.” It also says that Kobilka now goes to church with his wife in Stanford, Calif.
Contribution to science. Received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2012"for his studies of G protein-coupled receptors."
Biology
| John Ray | John Ray (1627 – 1705) |
Worldview. Anglican, priest. Ray was a devout Christian and expressed his faith in “natural theology.” Its main position was that the wisdom and power of God can be understood through the study of his creation, the sensory world. In 1660, the scientist wrote: “There is no more valuable and delightful occupation for a free person than to contemplate the beauty of nature and honor the infinite wisdom and goodness of God.” Ray's ideas had a great influence on the Christian philosopher and theologian William Paley, whose works were fascinated by Charles Darwin.
Contribution to science. Naturalist, botanist, zoologist. Ray is sometimes called the "father of English natural history". The classification of plants proposed by him in his work “Historia Plantarum” was a serious step towards modern taxonomy. The first gave a definition to the biological concept of “species”.
Worldview. Lutheran. was the first to classify man as a biological species, while the scientist wrote that he believed in the existence of a soul in animals and argued that the difference between man and animal is nobility.
Contribution to science. He defined the concept of a biological species, founded modern taxonomy, and helped biology become a full-fledged science. He raised the question of the origin of man into the natural sciences.
Worldview. Anglican (presumably). The scientist’s main work is “Monographia Apum Angliae”, the purpose of writing this book was both scientific and religious; in one of his letters in 1800, Kirby writes: “The Author of Scripture is also the author of Nature: and the visible world, with its types and symbols, proclaims the same the truth that the Bible says. This makes the natural scientist a religious man, directing his attention to the glory of the Lord, to which he can testify in his works, and in his studies of living beings see the mercy of the Lord; let this be to some extent the fruit of my labors"
Contribution to science. Founder of entomology.
Worldview. Lutheran. He was a believer throughout his life and attended church services. He played an important role in the opening of the Paris Bible Society in 1818, he was vice-president. From 1822 until his death in 1832, Cuvier was Grand Master of the Protestant Faculty of Theology at the French University.
Contribution to science. A naturalist and zoologist, he was a major figure among natural scientists of the early 19th century, sometimes called the founder of paleontology and comparative anatomy. Compare modern animals with fossils. He is known as the man who established the fact of extinction, as the most influential proponent of the theory of catastrophism in the 19th century.
| Asa Gray | Asa Gray (1810 – 1888) |
Worldview. An Orthodox Presbyterian, he professed the Nicene Creed. He corresponded with Darwin and was his friend, popularized his ideas in the United States, but considered his works as confirmation of his commitment to natural theology (“Natural theology”). When Charles Darwin wrote: “It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man can be both a zealous theist and an evolutionist,” he had Gray in mind first of all.
Contribution to science. Florist, botanist. He was a foreign corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Developed statistical methods for comparing floras. Unified the taxonomy of North American plants.
Worldview. Catholic, Augustinian monk.
Contribution to science. Founded genetics by showing that the heredity of certain characteristics of peas (Georg grew about 29,000 pea plants for this purpose in the monastery of St. Thomas in Brno) forms a certain structure, which is now known as Mendel's laws. Additionally, as a scientist, Mendel explored astronomy and meteorology, founding the Austrian Meteorological Society in 1865. After working with peas, Mendel began to study animals, bees, but was unable to describe their heredity. He also described a new plant species, which was later named after him.
Worldview. A deist, spiritualist, was a member of the Theosophical Society. He argued with Darwin and interpreted evolution as a directed process. Wallace believed that natural selection could not be the source of musical, artistic or musical talent, nor of metafictional ideas and wit. He claimed that something in the "invisible Universe of Spirit" had manifested itself at least three times in history. The first time - during the creation of life from inorganic matter, the second time - during the creation of consciousness in higher animals, and the third time during the creation of higher rational abilities in man. He also believed that the raison d'être of the universe was "the perfection of the human spirit." The following passage also testifies to Wallace's views: “Feelings of abstract justice or love of one's neighbor,” he wrote, “could never be acquired in this way (that is, by selection), for these feelings are incompatible with the law of survival of the fittest,” according to Wallace “ The Supreme Intelligent Being gave a certain direction to the development of man, directed him towards a special goal, just as man guides the development of many animal and plant forms.”
Contribution to science. An evolutionary biologist, he developed his theory in parallel with Charles Darwin, who admired his ideas. Founder of zoogeography. The first criticized the ideas of Lamarckism and coined the term “Darwinism”. According to anthropologist Gregory Bateson, Wallace "proclaimed the most powerful idea that can be found in the 19th century."
Worldview. Jew, Zionist. He wrote a “Call to Orthodoxy,” in which he convinced Jews of the need to keep the commandments, criticized “enlightened” Jews for their disregard for Jewish religious law; bequeathed his fortune to help yeshivas.
Contribution to science. Immunologist and bacteriologist. Creator of the first vaccines against plague and cholera.
Worldview. Anglican. Although his views were not dogmatic, he was a deeply religious man. H. Allen Orr writes that Fisher was: "a very devout Anglican who, in addition to founding modern statistics and population genetics, wrote for church publications."
Contribution to science. Evolutionary biologist, geneticist and statistician. Almost single-handedly he laid the foundations of modern statistics, where the so-called “Fisher’s exact test” he developed is still used. In mathematics he derived the Kolmogorov-Fisher equation. In biology, he formulated “Fisher’s fundamental theorem of natural selection.”
| Theodosius Grigorievich Dobzhansky | (1900 - 1975) |
Worldview. Orthodox. But his personal beliefs remain a mystery; he was undoubtedly a believer, but, for example, his student Francisco Ayala claims that the scientist “did not believe in a personal God and life after death.” However, the famous biologist Ernst Mayer said exactly the opposite, in the magazine “Sceptic” he is quoted as saying: “On the other hand, many evolutionists, such as Dobrozhansky, believed in a personal God.” The scientist himself believed that God created through evolution, a position that can be characterized as theistic evolutionism. In 1972, Dobrozhansky received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from St. Vladimir's Seminary in Crestwood.
Contribution to science. Ethnologist, one of the founders of the synthetic theory of evolution. His work “Genetics and the Origin of Species” is rightfully considered one of the most significant works on the synthetic theory of evolution.
Worldview. Catholic. In written by A.G. Karzmar’s biography of the scientist contains the following lines: “Although Eccles was not always a church-going Catholic, he was a theist and a spiritual person, the scientist believed that “there is a Divine Providence above us, and it is higher than the materialistic events of biological evolution.” In his book “Understanding the Brain,” the scientist proposed the following solution to the brain-mind problem; he, like Karl Popper, left monism and divided the world into three: in the first world there are physical objects and states (biology), in the second there are states of consciousness ( experience: perception, thinking, emotions, intentions, memory, dreams, creative imagination), in the third world of knowledge in the objective sense (philosophy, theology, science, history, literature, technology); Eccles is also credited with saying: “I am forced to think that there is something like a supernatural principle of my unique, self-conscious spirit and my unique soul. The idea of supernatural creation helps me avoid the obviously ridiculous conclusion about the genetic origin of my unique self.
Contribution to science. Neurophysiologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine for 1963. For discoveries concerning ionic mechanisms of excitation and inhibition in the peripheral and central regions of nerve cells.
| Ernst Boris Chain | Ernst Boris Chain (1909 - 1979) |
Worldview. Orthodox Jew. I doubted Darwin's theory of evolution. Thus, Clark in his work “The Life of Ernst Chain: Penicillin and Beyond” quotes the scientist: “Over the years I have often said that speculation about the origin of life serves no useful purpose, because even the most primitive living system is too difficult to understand in the monstrously primitive terms that scientists use in their attempts to explain inexplicable events that happened billions of years ago." , dedicated to a subject that has been frequently addressed; he and Crick are the main representatives of the positivist-materialist philosophy, according to which all aspects of life can be described in relatively simple psycho-chemical categories. It has always seemed to me that this approach shows a huge ignorance of the biology of people who put forward such primitive ideas." He raised his children in the Jewish faith. In 1965 he gave a speech “Why I am a Jew.”
Contribution to science. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1945 for “the discovery of penicillin and its healing effects in various infectious diseases”, he is considered one of the founders of the antibiotic revolution.
| George Price | George Robert Price (1922 – 1975) |
Worldview. Orthodox Christian (debatable). In June 1970, he converted to Christianity due to his religious experience and began to study the New Testament, publishing an essay entitled “The Twelve Days of Easter.” Price believed that there were too many coincidences in his life. At the very end of his life, he moved away from the scientific gaze of the Bible and began to help vagabonds in North London.
Contribution to science. Population geneticist, made significant contributions to the mathematical theory of population genetics. Together with J.M. Smith introduced the concept of “stable evolutionary strategy” into biology, the most important concept in game theory; formalized Fisher's theorem of natural selection; supplemented the work of U.D. Hamilton on kin selection by the new Peirce equation.
Worldview. Jew. He studied in a yeshiva and attended Talmudic school until the end of his life.
Contribution to science. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine 1976 for the discovery of the Hepatitis B Vaccine, which reduced the incidence of the disease in children in China from fifteen to one percent within ten years. Jonathan Chernow said of him that "Blumberg has prevented more cancer deaths than any living person on the planet."
| Jerome Lejeune | Jérôme Jean Louis Marie Lejeune (1926 - 1994) |
Worldview. Catholic. He actively opposed abortion and was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. The Catholic Church awarded him the title "Servant of God". One atheist scientist (name unknown) wrote about Lejeune in the article “Materialism about the Beginning of Life”: “Professor Lejeune was a Catholic and he drew idealistic conclusions from scientific facts. For example, he argued that the moment of conception is not only the connection of information with the aim of creating a new life, but also the emergence of a new, immortal soul, given by God himself.”
Contribution to science. The doctor, a geneticist, gave an explanation for Down syndrome, linking it with a chromosomal abnormality, and also described the cat cry syndrome, which is sometimes called “Lejeune syndrome.” The scientist also expanded the concept of karyotype and explained the underdevelopment of the fetal neural tube. For the first time he described clonal evolution in a child with Down syndrome and leukemia.
Worldview. Christian of the Evangelical faith. He calls himself a “serious Christian” and adheres to theistic evolution on the question of the origin of life.
Contribution to science. Head of the project to decipher the human genome.
Physics
Worldview. Catholic. He asserted that “Holy Scripture cannot in any case affirm a lie or be mistaken; his sayings are absolute and undeniably true.”
Contribution to science. Refuted Aristotelian physics. He was the first to use a telescope to observe celestial bodies. He laid the foundations of classical mechanics, basing it on the experimental method, for which he is often called the “father of modern physics.”
Worldview. Catholic Jansenist. A religious philosopher, Pascal defended the Christian faith, argued with Descartes, argued with the atheists of his time, condemned the casuistry of the Jesuits, who justified the vices of high society (in “Letters to a Provincial”), and the author of numerous reflections on philosophical and religious topics. He wrote the work “Thoughts on Religion and Other Subjects,” a collection of ideas in defense of Christianity against criticism from atheists, which includes the famous “Pascal’s Wager.”
Contribution to science. He created a calculating machine-arphmometer. He experimentally refuted the prevailing axiom at that time, taken from Aristotle, that nature is “afraid of the void,” and at the same time formulated the basic law of hydrostatics. In correspondence with Fermat, he laid the foundations of probability theory. He is also at the origins of projective geometry and mathematical analysis.
Worldview. Catholic, philosopher. Voltaire wrote many satires against him, for example, “Doctor Acacius, Papal Physician.” Before his death, the scientist admitted that Christianity “leads man to the greatest good through the greatest possible means.”
Contribution to science. He introduced the concept of the principle of least action into mechanics, and immediately pointed out its universal nature. He was a pioneer in genetics, in particular, some find that his views contributed to the development of the theory of evolution and natural selection.
Worldview. Catholic. He studied theology, wanted to connect his life with the Church, but chose the path of science. His biographer, Professor Venturoli, speaks of Galvani’s deep religiosity. In 1801, another of his biographers, Alibert, writes about the scientist: “it can be added that in his public demonstrations, he never completed his lectures without calling on his listeners to renew their faith, always drawing their attention to the idea of an eternal Providence that develops, preserves and makes life flow among many other kinds of things.”
Contribution to science. He was one of the first to study electrophysiology and “animal electricity”. The phenomenon “galvanism” was named after him.
Worldview. Catholic. The dogmas, social life and rituals of the Roman Church formed a large part of Volta's life (culture). His best friends were the clergy. Volta remained close to his brothers, the canon and archdeacon, and was a churched man (practicing, in Catholic terminology). Examples of his religiosity include a flirtation with Jansenism in the 1790s and an 1815 confession of faith written to defend religion against scientism.
Contribution to science. Physicist, invented the chemical battery in 1800. Discovered methane. Found ways to measure charge (Q) and potential (V). Created the world's first chemical current source.
| Andre-Marie Ampère | André-Marie Ampère (1775 - 1836) |
Worldview. Catholic. The scientist is credited with the following statement: “Study, explore earthly things - this is the duty of a man of science. Explore nature with one hand, and with the other, like a father’s robe, hold on to the hem of God’s robe.” At the age of 18, the scientist believed that there were three culminating moments in his life: “First Communion, reading Antoine Thomas’s eulogy to Descartes, and the storming of the Bastille.” When his wife died, Ampere wrote out two verses from the Psalms and the prayer “O Lord, Merciful God, unite me in Heaven with those whom you allowed me to love on Earth,” at that time he was overwhelmed by strong doubts, and in his free time the scientist read The Bible and the Fathers of the Church.
Contribution to science. Physicist and mathematician. In electrodynamics: he established a rule for determining the direction of action of a magnetic field on a magnetic needle (“Ampere’s rule”), discovered the influence of the Earth’s magnetic field on moving conductors with current, discovered the interaction between electric currents, and formulated the law of this phenomenon (“Ampere’s law”). Contributed to the development of the theory of magnetism: he discovered the magnetic effect of the solenoid. Ampere was also an inventor - it was he who invented the commutator and the electromagnetic telegraph. Ampere also contributed to chemistry through his joint work with Avogadro
| Hans Christian Oersted | Hans Christian Ørsted (1777 - 1851) |
Worldview. Lutheran (presumably). In his 1814 speech entitled “The Development of Science, Understood as the Task of Religion” (the scientist included this speech in his book The Soul in Nature), in it he writes that this speech includes many ideas that are more developed in other parts of the book, but here they are presented as a whole), Oersted states the following: “we will try to establish our conviction of the existing harmony between science and religion, by showing how a man of science should look at his studies, if he understands them correctly, viz. as the task of religion." What follows is a long discussion that can be found in the book.
Contribution to science. Physicist and chemist. Discovered that electric current creates a magnetic field. The first modern thinker to describe and name a thought experiment in detail. Oersted's work was an important step towards a unified concept of energy.
Worldview. Protestant, Church of Scotland. After his marriage, he served as a deacon and churchwarden in one of the meetinghouses of his youth, and researchers note that “a strong sense of harmony between God and nature permeated his entire life and work.”
Contribution to science. Contributed to electromagnetism and electrochemistry. Considered the best experimenter and one of the most influential scientists in the history of science. Discovered benzene. He noticed a phenomenon he called diamagnetism. Discovered the principle of electromagnetic induction. His invention of electromagnetic rotators served as the basis for the electric motor. Thanks also to his efforts, electricity began to be used in technology.
Worldview. Anglican (presumably). Joule wrote: “A phenomenon of nature, be it mechanical, chemical, life, almost completely transforms into itself over a long period of time. Thus, order is maintained and nothing is out of order, nothing is lost forever, but the whole mechanism, such as it is, works smoothly and harmoniously, all controlled by God's will. He was one of the scientists who signed the "Declaration of Students of Natural and Physical Sciences", written in response to the wave of Darwinism that came to England.
Contribution to science. Formulated the first law of thermodynamics, discovered Joule's Law of heat power when an electric current flows. He was the first to calculate the speed of gas molecules. Calculated the mechanical equivalent of heat.
Worldview. Anglican (presumably). In 1886, he became president of the Victoria Institute, whose goal was to respond to the evolutionary movement of the 60s; in 1891, Stokes gave a lecture at this institute; he was also president of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and was actively involved in missionary issues. Stokes said: “I know of no sound conclusions of science that would contradict the Christian religion.”
Contribution to science. Physicist and mathematician, author of the Stokes theorem, made significant contributions to the development of hydrodynamics, optics and mathematical physics.
Worldview. Presbyterian. Throughout his life he was a devout person, attending church every day. As can be seen from the scientist's speech at the Christian Evidence Society (an organization created to combat atheism in Victorian society), Thompson believed that his faith helped him understand reality, informed him. In the broad sense of the word, the scientist was a creationist, but he was by no means a “flood geologist”; he could be said to support the view known as theistic evolution. He often openly disagreed with Charles Darwin's followers and entered into disputes with them.
Contribution to science. Mathematical physicist and engineer. Formulated the first and second laws of thermodynamics and helped unify the emerging disciplines in physics. He guessed that there was a lower temperature limit, absolute zero. He is also known as an inventor, author of about 70 patents.
Worldview. Christian of evangelical faith. At the end of his life he became a churchwarden in the Church of Scotland. As a child, he attended services in both the Church of Scotland (his father's denomination) and the Episcopal Church (his mother's denomination); in April 1853, the scientist converted to the evangelical faith, which is why he began to adhere to anti-positivist views.
Contribution to science. Physicist whose main achievement was the formulation of the classical theory of electromagnetism. Thus, he united previously disparate observations, experiments and equations in electricity, magnetism and optics into a single theory. Maxwell's equations show that electricity, magnetism and light are one and the same phenomenon. These achievements of his were called “the second greatest unification in physics” (after the work of Isaac Newton). The scientist also helped develop the Boltzmann-Maxwell distribution, which is a statistical means of describing certain aspects in the kinetic theory of gases. Maxwell is also known as the man who created the first durable color photograph in 1861.
Worldview. Congregationalist. Fleming was a creationist and rejected Darwin's ideas as atheistic (from Fleming's book Evolution or Creation?). In 1932, he helped found the Evolution Protest Movement. Fleming once preached "what is in the fields" at St. Martin's Church in London, and his sermon was dedicated to the evidence of the Resurrection. The scientist bequeathed most of his inheritance to Christian charitable organizations that helped the poor.
Contribution to science. Physicist and engineer. Considered the father of modern electrical engineering. Formulated two rules known to physics: left and right hands. Invented the so-called Fleming valve
| Sir Joseph John Thomson | Sir Joseph John Thomson (1856 - 1940) |
Worldview. Anglican. Raymond Seager in his book J. J. Thomson, Anglican states the following: “As a professor, Thompson attended the Sunday evening service of the university chapel, and as head of the university, the morning service. Moreover, he took an interest in the Trinity Mission in Camberwell. Respectful of his personal religious life, Thompson consistently prayed every day and read the Bible before bed. He really was a believing Christian!”
Contribution to science. Physicist, discovered the electron and isotope. Winner of the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the discovery of the electron and services in the field of theoretical and experimental studies of the conductivity of electricity in gases." The scientist also invented the mass spectrometer, discovered the natural radioactivity of potassium, and showed that hydrogen has only one electron per atom, while previous theories assumed that hydrogen had many electrons.
Worldview. Catholic (converted six months before his death), previously a deeply religious deist. In his work “Religion and Natural Science,” the scientist wrote (the quote is given with context, from the beginning of the paragraph: “With such a coincidence, one should, however, pay attention to one fundamental difference. God is given to a religious person directly and primarily. From Him, His omnipotent will comes all life and all phenomena of both the corporeal and spiritual world. Although He is unknowable by reason, He nevertheless directly manifests Himself through the medium of religious symbols, putting His holy message into the souls of those who, by faith, trust in Him. In contrast to this for the natural scientist, only the content of his perceptions and the measurements derived from them is primary. Hence, through inductive ascent, he tries to get as close as possible to God and His world order as the highest, eternally unattainable goal. Consequently, both religion and natural science need faith in God, with In this regard, for religion God stands at the beginning of all thinking, and for natural science - at the end.”
Contribution to science. The founder of quantum physics, which is why he became winner of the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics. Formulated Planck's postulate (dark body radiation), an expression for the spectral power density of black body radiation.
Worldview. Anglican (possibly Anglo-Catholic). Bragg’s daughter wrote about the scientist’s faith: “For W. Bragg, religious faith was the willingness to bet everything on the hypothesis that Jesus Christ was right, and to test this by the experiment of performing a lifelong work of mercy. Reading the Bible was mandatory. Bragg often said that "if I have any style of writing at all, it is due to the fact that I was brought up on the Authorized Version [of the Bible]." He knew the Bible and could usually rattle off “chapter or verse.” Young Professor W. Bragg became churchwarden at St. John's in Adelaide. He also received permission to preach."
Contribution to science. Physicist, Nobel Prize laureate 1915 for "services to the study of crystals by X-rays." Bragg also created the first instrument for recording diffraction patterns. Together with his son, he developed the basics of a method for determining the structure of crystals from the diffraction pattern of X-rays.
Worldview. Presbyterian. Raymond Seeger, in his article “Compton, Christian Humanist,” published in The Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, writes the following: “As Arthur Compton grew older, so did his horizons, but it was always a clear Christian view of the world. (...) Throughout his life, the scientist was active in church affairs, from teaching Sunday school and serving as a church warden to positions on the Presbyterian Board of Education (...) Compton believed that the fundamental problem of humanity, inspiring the meaning of life, lies outside of science. According to a 1936 Times magazine report, the scientist was briefly a deacon in the Baptist Church.
Contribution to science. The physicist was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1927 for his discovery of the Compton effect. Invented a method for demonstrating the rotation of the Earth.
| Georges Lemaitre | Monseigneur Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître (1894 - 1966) |
Worldview. Catholic priest (since 1923). He graduated from the Jesuit College and the Catholic University of Louvain, where he was educated in classical Thomistic philosophy. Since 1936, he has been a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, of which he became president in 1960. Lemaitre believed that faith can be an advantage for a scientist: “As science passes through the simple stage of description, it becomes true science. She also becomes more religious. Mathematicians, astronomers and physicists, for example, are very religious people, with few exceptions. The deeper they penetrate into the mystery of the Universe, the deeper becomes their conviction that the force behind the stars, electrons and atoms is law and goodness.”
Contribution to science. A cosmologist, the author of the theory of the expanding Universe, Lemaitre was the first to formulate the relationship between the distance and speed of galaxies and proposed in 1927 the first estimate of the coefficient of this relationship, now known as the Hubble constant. Lemaître's theory of the evolution of the world from the "primordial atom" was ironically called the "Big Bang" by Fred Hoyle in 1949. This name, "Big Bang", has historically been fixed in cosmology.
Worldview. A Lutheran, although towards the end of his life he was considered a mystic, since his views on religion were not orthodox. The author of the saying: “The first sip from the glass of natural science is taken by an atheist, but God awaits at the bottom of the glass.”
Contribution to science. Nobel Prize Laureate 1932 for the creation of quantum mechanics. In 1927, the scientist published his uncertainty principle, which brought him worldwide fame.
Worldview. Christian. Here is the scientist’s statement: “I believe in a God who can answer prayers, in whom we can trust, and without whom life on Earth would be meaningless (a fairy tale told by a madman). I believe that God has revealed Himself to us in many ways, through many men and women, and for us in the West the clearest revelation is through Jesus Christ and those who followed him.”
Contribution to science. In 1977 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for "fundamental theoretical studies of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems."
Worldview. Orthodox. A.N. Bogolyubov writes about him: “The entire body of his knowledge was a single whole, and the basis of his philosophy was his deep religiosity (he said that non-religious physicists can be counted on one hand). He was a son of the Orthodox Church and whenever time and health allowed him, he went to vespers and mass at the nearest church.”
Contribution to science. He proved the theorem “about the sharpness of the wedge”, created it together with N.M. Krylov theory of nonlinear oscillations. Created a consistent theory of superconductivity. In the theory of superfluidity he derived kinetic equations. He proposed a new synthesis of Bohr's theory of quasiperiodic functions.
Worldview. Methodist. Henry Margeno cites the following statement of the scientist: “And I see the need for God both in the Universe and in my life.” When the scientist was asked if he was a religious person, he replied: “Yes, I was raised Protestant and I was in several denominations (...) I go to church, a very good Methodist church.” The scientist also stated that he is an orthodox Protestant.
Contribution to science. Physicist, received Nobel Prize in Physics 1981 for "contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy." In addition to optics, Shavlov also explored such areas of physics as superconductivity and nuclear magnetic resonance.
Worldview. A Muslim from the Ahmadi community. In his Nobel speech, the scientist quotes the Koran. When the Pakistani government passed a constitutional amendment declaring members of the Ahmadiyya community non-Muslims, the scientist left the country in protest.
Contribution to science. In 1979 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his theory of unification of weak and electromagnetic interactions. Some of his main achievements were also: the Pati-Salam model, magnetic photon, vector mesons, work on supersymmetry.
Worldview. Protestant (United Church of Christ). In a 2005 interview with The Guardian, the scientist said he was "raised Christian, and while my ideas have changed, I've always felt like a religious person." In the same interview, Townes stated: "What is the science? Science is an attempt to understand how the Universe works, including the human race. What is religion? It is an attempt to understand the purpose and meaning of the Universe, including the human race. If there is this purpose and meaning, then it must be interconnected with the structure of the Universe and how it works (...) Therefore, faith must teach us something about science and vice versa.”
Contribution to science. One of the creators of quantum electronics, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964 for "fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which led to the creation of emitters and amplifiers based on the laser-maser principle." In 1969, together with other scientists, he discovered the so-called. “maser effect” (radiation of cosmic water molecules at a wavelength of 1.35 cm), together with a colleague, he was the first to calculate the mass of the black hole in the center of our galaxy. The scientist also made contributions to nonlinear optics: he discovered Mandelstam-Brillouin stimulated scattering, introduced the concept of the critical power of a light beam and the phenomenon of self-focusing, and experimentally observed the effect of autocollimation of light.
| Freeman John Dyson | Freeman John Dyson (b. 1923) |
Worldview. A non-denominational Christian, although Dyson's views can be described as agnostic (in one of his books he wrote that he does not consider himself a practicing Christian, but only a practicing one, and stated that he does not see the point in a theology that claims to know the answers to fundamental questions) . The scientist vigorously disagrees with reductionism, so, in his Tempelton lecture, Dyson said: “Science and religion are two windows through which people look, trying to understand the Universe, to understand why they are here. These two windows offer different views, but they look at the same Universe. Neither of them is complete, they are both one-sided. Both exclude significant parts of the real world."
Contribution to science. Theoretical physicist and mathematician, known for his work in quantum electrodynamics, astronomy and nuclear engineering.
Worldview. Jew, in the book of Jerry Bergman the following quote is given from the scientist: “The best data we have is what I would be able to predict if I had only the Pentateuch of Moses, the book of Psalms and the entire Bible in front of me.” In his speeches, the scientist often said that he saw meaning in the Universe, and pointed out the reluctance of the scientific community to accept the Big Bang Theory, since it points to the creation of the world.
Contribution to science. Physicist, for the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1976. Using a maser, I solved the problem of increasing the accuracy of antenna tuning.
Worldview. Quaker. The scientist’s worldview is known from the book by István Hargitay, when asked “Could you tell us about your attitude towards religion?” The scientist responded as follows: “My family and I are active members of the religious community of Friends, that is, the Quaker community. Religion is an important part of our lives (especially for my wife and I; for our children to a lesser extent). My wife and I often spend time with other believers in our community; it helps us become more aware of our attitude towards life, reminds us of why we are on Earth and what we can do for others. Quakers are a group of Christians who believe in the possibility of direct communication between man and the Spirit, whom we call God. Reflection and self-contemplation helps to communicate with this Spirit and learn a lot about yourself and how to live on Earth. Quakers believe that wars cannot resolve differences and that lasting results are achieved through peaceful resolution of problems. We have always refused and refuse to participate in war, but we are ready to serve our country in other ways. We believe that there is something Divine in every person, therefore human life is sacred. You need to look for the depth of spiritual presence in people, even in those with whom you disagree.”
Contribution to science. Physicist, awarded Nobel Prize in Physics 1993 for “the discovery of a new type of pulsar, which has provided new opportunities in the study of gravity.”
Worldview. Methodist. One of the founders of the International Society for Science and Religion. Known for his frequent participation in the dialogue between "faith and science". In his autobiography on the Nobel Prize website, Phillips writes: “In 1979, after Jane (the scientist’s wife) and I moved to Gasersburg, we joined the United Methodist Church (...) Our children were our inexhaustible a source of blessing, adventure and challenge. At the time, Jane and I were trying to find new jobs, and having children required a delicate balance between work, home, and church life. But somehow, our faith and our youthful energy carried us through these times.”
Contribution to science. Physicist, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the development of methods for cooling and trapping atoms with a laser beam."
Mathematics
Worldview. Catholic.
Contribution to science. Mathematician, creator of number theory, author of Fermat's Last Theorem. The scientist formulated the general law of differentiation of fractional powers. He founded analytical geometry (along with Descartes) and applied it to space. He stood at the origins of probability theory.
| Christiaan Huygens | Christiaan Huygens (1629 - 1695) |
Worldview. Protestant of the Reformed Church. When the French monarchy stopped tolerating Protestantism in 1881 (revocation of the Edict of Nantes), Huygens left the country, although they wanted to make an exception for him, which testifies to his religious beliefs.
Contribution to science. The first president of the Farntsuz Academy of Sciences, he served for 15 years. Discovered the theory of evolutes and involutes. He invented a pendulum clock and published a classic work on mechanics, “Pendulum Clock.” He derived the laws of uniformly accelerated freely falling bodies and formulated thirteen theorems on centrifugal force. Together with Fermat and Pascal, he laid the foundations of probability theory. He discovered Saturn's moon Titan, described the rings of Saturn, and discovered an ice cap at the South Pole of Mars. He invented a special eyepiece, consisting of two flat-convex lenses, named after him. The first called for choosing a universal natural measure of length. Simultaneously with Wallis and Rehn, he solved the problem of the collision of elastic bodies.
Worldview. The Christian is presumably a Protestant. He spoke out against theological orthodoxy, and against materialism and atheism. He created his own philosophical doctrine, the so-called. Leibniz's monadology, which was close to deism and pantheism.
Contribution to science. Predetermined mathematical analysis and combinatorics. Laid the foundations of mathematical logic and combinatorics. He took a very important step towards the creation of a computer; he was the first to describe the binary number system. He was the only person who worked freely with both continuous and discrete ones. For the first time he formulated the law of conservation of energy. Created a mechanical calculator (together with H. Huygens).
Worldview. Christian. He believed in the inspiration of Scripture, argued with Denny Diderot about the existence of God, and wrote an apologetic treatise “Defense of Divine Revelation from the Objections of Freethinkers.”
Contribution to science. It is often said that from the point of view of mathematics, the 18th century is the century of Euler. Many call him the greatest mathematician of all time. Euler was the first to link analysis, algebra, trigonometry, number theory and other branches of mathematics into a single system; listing all his discoveries by name is impossible due to the format of this section.
Worldview. Lutheran. Although Gauss did not believe in a personal God and was considered a deist, it can be argued that he had a religious worldview, for example, he believed in the immortality of the soul and life after death. According to Dunnington, Gauss believed in an immortal, righteous, omniscient and omnipotent God. With all his love for mathematics, Karl Friedrich never absolutized it, he said: “There are problems to the solution of which I would attribute infinitely greater importance compared to mathematical problems, for example, problems related to ethics, or our relationship to God, or concerning our destiny and our future; but their solution lies entirely beyond our limits and absolutely beyond the scope of science.”
Contribution to science. The scientist is often called the King of Mathematics (lat. Princeps mathematicalorum), this reflects his invaluable and vast contribution to the “queen of sciences”. Thus, in algebra, Gauss came up with a rigorous proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra, discovered the ring of complex integers, and created the classical theory of comparisons. In geometry, the scientist contributed to differential geometry, for the first time dealt with the internal geometry of surfaces: he discovered the characteristic of a surface (named in his honor), proved the fundamental theorem of surfaces, Gauss also created a separate science - higher geodesy. Dunnington claimed that Gauss was the first to study non-Euclidean geometry, but was afraid to publish his results, considering them meaningless. In mathematical analysis, Gauss created the theory of potential and studied elliptic functions. The scientist was also interested in astronomy, where he studied the orbits of small planets and found a way to determine orbital elements from three complete observations. Many of his students later became great mathematicians. The scientist also studied physics, where he developed the theory of capillarity and the theory of lens systems, and also laid the foundations for the theory of electromagnetism, and designed (together with Weber) the first primitive electric telegraph.
Worldview. Catholic priest. In addition to his scientific research, Bolzano also dealt with theological and philosophical issues.
Contribution to science. Bolzano's work contributed to the formation of strict definitions of analysis using "epsilon" and "delta". In many areas of mathematics, the scientist was a pioneer, ahead of his time: even before Cantor, Bolzano studied infinite sets; using geometric considerations, the scientist obtained examples of continuous, but nowhere differentiable functions. The scientist put forward the idea of the arithmetic theory of the real number, in 1817 he proved the Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem (independent of the latter, who discovered it half a century later), the Bolzano-Cauchy theorem.
Worldview. Anglican (presumably). Convincedly defended the authenticity of biblical miracles in an era when people were increasingly moving away from the Christian worldview.
Contribution to science. He is the first author of the idea of creating a computing machine, which today is called a computer, and developed its project.
Worldview. Calvinist. Gene Chase writes about Hamilton's theology: “In Hamilton's Calvinist theology, which was also professed by his friend J. Maxwell, God is the creator of both the Universe and the laws that govern it. This means that the various relationships between material objects, called laws, are as real as the objects themselves. As a Christian, Hamilton was confident that God's mark was present in every part of nature." This “metaphysical fervor,” in the words of his best 20th-century biographer, Thomas Hopkins, “propelled him to the task of generalizing complex numbers to quaternions.” De Morgan writes in his obituary for the scientist that “he was offered to become a priest, but decided to devote all his time to science: two bishops offered him ordination.”
Contribution to science. The mathematician is primarily known for discovering quaternions, creating the foundations of vector analysis and indicating the possibility of obtaining differential equations of motion based on a new principle called “Hamilton’s principle.” Theoretically substantiated some properties of birefringent crystals with two optical axes, which was confirmed experimentally.
Worldview. Catholic. He returned to faith in 1856 under the influence of O. Cauchy.
Contribution to science. He studied the class of orthogonal polynomials, discovered special bilinear forms, which were named after him, and proved the transcendence of the number e.
Worldview. Christian (denomination unknown). Together with the physicist Balfour Stewart, he wrote the book “The Unseen Universe” (1875) in order to “refute materialism on purely scientific grounds.” Due to the fact that the book was of interest to the public, Tait wrote a sequel - the book “Paradoxical Philosophy” (“Paradoxical Philosophy”, 1878).
Contribution to science. A mathematical physicist and topologist, he laid the foundation for topology with his early work on knot theory. In graph theory, his name is known from a proposal by Tait. He is also the author of works on the theory of quaternions: he translated the results of G. Helmholtz into quaternion language, applied quaternion analysis to the problem of the motion of an ideal fluid; published (1867) “Elementary treatise on quaternions.” In mathematical physics he is known for his (1867) “treatise on natural philosophy.”
| John Venn | John Venn (1834 - 1923) |
Worldview. Church of England priest (ordained 1859). In 1883, due to disagreements with orthodox Protestantism, he left the priesthood, finding that he could not follow the thirty-nine laws of the Church of England. However, Venn's son, John Archibald Venn, wrote that his father later changed his mind and, if faced with the same choice a second time, would have remained a priest. Which is not surprising, because according to the mathematician’s son, his father was a man with sincere religious beliefs throughout his entire life.
Contribution to science. Logician, expanded Boole's logic, introduced a schematic way of representing sets (the so-called Venn diagram). In his work "The Logic of Chance" (1866), which Charles Peirce called "a book that every thinking man should read", he first used such mathematical terms as "rule of inheritance" and "significance", and also introduced frequency theory of probability.
Worldview. He belonged to the Episcopal Church. Peirce, in addition to being a scientist, was a philosopher, and his views are known from his philosophical works. He recognized the reality of God, but not the existence, and he interpreted the words “reality” and “existence” in a special way. By "existence" he meant (J. Buncher, "Philosophical Writings of Peirce") "the ability to react with others, like things in the environment", given this interpretation, it can be argued that Peirce believed in God, his views are more fully stated in his work "The Forgotten Argument for the Reality of God." As a philosopher, Peirce also made the case for free will and immortality. Peirce has sometimes been called the "Kant of American philosophy."
Contribution to science. Mathematician (logician and statistician). In 1886, the scientist was one of the first to realize that electrical switch circuits could perform logical operations. In his works, Peirce anticipated many of the discoveries of Georg Cantor. In 1880-81 he showed how Boolean algebra could be worked using only one logical binary operator (Peirce's arrow), beating Schaeffer by 33 years. In 1881, a little before Dedekind, the scientist constructed the axiomatics of natural numbers.
| Georg Cantor | Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor (1845 - 1918) |
Worldview. A Lutheran scientist believed that his transfinite numbers could be an argument against both materialism and determinism, and was surprised to learn that he was the only person in Halle who did not adhere to a deterministic philosophy. Cantor identified Absolute Infinity with God, and believed that his work on transfinite numbers was directly revealed to him by God himself, who chose him to tell the world about it. Cantor corresponded with many Christian theologians and philosophers about his mathematical work, which was widely discussed, it went beyond the scope of pure mathematics and became the object of philosophical consideration.
Contribution to science. Mathematician, primarily known as the inventor of set theory. He proved that real numbers cannot be counted and established the importance of one-to-one mapping from one set to another.
Worldview. Platonist (religious affiliation unknown). Before World War I, the scientist was an agnostic, then he returned to faith without joining any Christian denomination. In his book Process and Reality he defends a theistic worldview. Whitehead rejected the dualism between body and mind, which brings him closer to Eastern teachings such as Buddhism and Taoism.
Contribution to science. Together with Bertrand Russell, he was the author of a fundamental work "Principia Mathematica".
Worldview. Jew. The only professor of mathematics in Göttingen who attended the city synagogue.
Contribution to science. Came up with a simple proof for the prime number distribution theorem. Introduced the first systematic approach to analytical number theory. Also made important contributions to complex analysis. G. Hardy wrote that no one was as passionately devoted to mathematics as Landau.
Worldview. Orthodox. He was persecuted for his religious beliefs in the USSR, and evaded the leadership of the Moscow Mathematical Society.
Contribution to science. Creator of the descriptive theory of sets and functions. Founded the Moscow mathematical school.
Worldview. Orthodox Jew. He was a convinced Zionist. Despite this, Frenkel did not immediately accept the invitation to teach at the newly created Hebrew University of Jerusalem, since it was too secular. In his biography, the mathematician wrote that he sought advice from his deeply respected Rabbi Abraham Kook; he was worried that the University could become a platform for the development of heretical “scientific” interpretations of the TaNaKh (Old Testament) and Jewish sacred texts. Rabbi Kook answered Frenkel that he should participate in the work of the University, and thereby raise its spiritual level.
Contribution to science. Mathematician, logician. He laid the foundations of modern set theory by developing the Zernelo axiomatics and thereby formulated the ZFC axiomatics, which later became classical. He also wrote several works on general algebra and foundations of mathematics.
Worldview. Lutheran. Discussed with Albert Einstein, who adhered to pantheism, trying to convince the scientist of the existence of a personal God, Gödel argued the following: “Spinoza’s God is less than a person; my God is more than a person; since God can play the role of a person. There may be spirits that do not have a body, but can communicate with us and influence the world." Gödel's faith was testified by his wife, Adele, who said two days after his death that Gödel, although "he did not attend church, was religious and read the Bible in bed every Sunday morning." According to a biography of the scientist written by Hoa Vang, who knew Gödel directly, it is impossible to separate Gödel's scientific impulse from his scientific questions, and Gödel himself described his philosophy as "rationalistic, idealistic, optimistic and theological." Gödel tried to take a new approach to the ontological argument for the proof of the existence of God, formulated by Anselm of Canterbury. To reconstruct this argument, the scientist used modal logic.
Contribution to science. Logician, formulated and proved the theorem on incompleteness and completeness, which had broad consequences for both mathematics and philosophy, thereby revolutionizing logic. In the field of cosmological theory, Gödel proposed a model of a rotating universe.
Worldview. Orthodox. In one of the interviews, to the question: “(...) Are you an Orthodox person, but is this just from family tradition, or did you have some kind of conscious choice?” Igor Rostislavovich replied: “No, there was no tradition in our family, there was a tradition, but it was very strange, interrupted. He was baptized in the Orthodox Church - that’s all about tradition. This gap has affected an entire generation." And also answering the next question, Shafarevich says: “It seems to me that we need to try to take a position that would be consistent. It’s not that with one side of my being I do something, follow certain views, and the other side does something that is completely inconsistent with it. I have a feeling that, being Russian, believing in God, I cannot realize this state of mine otherwise than by being Orthodox. (...)".
Contribution to science. The greatest Soviet and Russian scientist, published more than 138 scientific articles, wrote several textbooks. Shafarevich defended his doctoral dissertation at the age of 23, at the age of 35 he was elected corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and on December 7, 1991 he was elected academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. At one time he was president of the Moscow Mathematical Society. He found the most general law of reciprocity of power residues in algebraic number fields, which was to a certain extent the final stage of the 150-year history of arithmetic reciprocity laws, dating back to Euler and Gauss. In 1954 he gave a solution to the inverse problem of Galois theory for solvable groups. Together with his student Golod in 1964, he proved the existence of infinite periodic groups with a finite number of generators.
Worldview. Orthodox Jew (religious Zionist). In his opinion, the first generation of Zionists failed to pass on their ideas to their predecessors because they were built on secular principles. In his view, in order for Zionism to survive, it must be built on a religious basis.
Contribution to science. Laureate Nobel Prize in Economics 2005 for his work on game theory.
Write to the author
Recognizing the imperfections of our list, we would be extremely grateful for any of your notes, corrections, or any criticism. This list is open to us, and we will still make many changes and amendments to it before it takes its final form, which may be published as a brochure. Sources that we will eventually add to the list are also welcome.
Scientists who probably had a religious worldview, but we did not find sources that would report this:
Sh. Pendant(1736-1806, Catholic), G. Ohm (1789-1854, Catholic), Osborne Reynolds (1842-1912), A. Becquerel, NOT. Zhukovsky, R. Milliken, E. Schrödinger, V. Pauli (1900-1958, deist; often criticized modern evolutionary biology.), A. Kastler, P. Jordan, E. Conklin, I.G. Petrovsky, M. Shal, G. Hertz, W. Ramsay, A. Kastler, A. Fleming, V. Zvorykin, W. Harvey, J. Parkinson, B. Smith, J. von Mahler, A. Popov, J-L. Leclerc, A. Cayley, A. Sandage; Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), Albrecht von Haller (1708-77), Robert Brown (1773-1858), Jens Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848), Charles Lyell (1797-1875), Justus Liebig (1803-1873), Matthias Jacob Schleiden (1804-1881), James Young Simpson (1811-1870), Camille Flammarion (1842-1925), Paul Sabatier (1854-1941), Pierre Marie Termier (1859-1939), Edwin Grant Conklin (1863-1952) ).
Application
| Nobel laureates by year | ||||
| 1906 | 1909 | 1912 | 1915 | 1918 |
| physics | physics | physiology and medicine | physics | physics |
| Joseph John Thomson | Guglielmo Marconi | Alexis Carrel | Sir William Lawrence Bragg | Max Planck |
| 1927 | 1932 | 1945 | 1963 | 1964 |
| physics | physics | physiology and medicine | physiology and medicine | physics |
| Arthur Holly Compton | Werner Carl Heisenberg | Ernst Boris Chain | Sir John Carew Eccles | Charles Hard Towns |
| 1974 | 1976(1) | 1976(2) | 1977 | 1979 |
| physics | physiology and medicine | physics | physics | physics |
| Anthony Hewish | Baruch Samuel Blamber | Arno Allan Penzias | Sir Neville Francis Mott | Abdus Salam |
| 1981 | 1990 | 1993 | 1996 | 1997 |
| physics | physiology and medicine | physics | chemistry | physics |
| Arthur Leonard Schawlov | Joseph Edward Murray | Joseph Houghton Taylor Jr. | Richard Smalley | William Daniel Phillips |
| 2005 | 2007 | 2012 | ||
| economy | chemistry | chemistry | ||
| Israel Robert John Aumann | Gerhard Ertl | Brian Kobilka | ||
The list lists Nobel laureates by year: 1902, 1906, 1909, 1912, 1915, 1918, 1927, 1932, 1945, 1963, 1964, 1974, 1976 (2: medicine and physics), 1977, 1978, 1979, 198 1, 1990 , 1993, 1996, 1997, 2005, 2007, 2012.
References
| 1. Wikipedia. 2. Encyclopedia "The Catholic Encyclopedia". 3. Tihomir Dimitrov. “50 Nobel laureates and other great scientists who believe in God”(the book is compiled mainly from letters, articles and books from the National Library of Bulgaria, the Biblioteca Comunale di Milano and the Austrian National Library). 4. Debeshire, John. “Simple Obsession. Bernhard Riemann and the greatest unsolved problem in mathematics.". Moscow, Astrel, 2010 - ISBN 978-5-271-25422-2. 5. Article "The 20 Most Brilliant Christian Professors" from the Internet resource “COLLEGE CRUNCH”. 6. Henry Morris. "Men of Science, Men of God", Master Books, El Cajon, California, 1988. 7. Article by Jerry Bergman "Jewish Scientists who oppose Darwin" from the Internet resource “Answer in Genesis”. 8. Max Planck. "Religion and Natural Science". 9. Alfred Whitehead. "Process and Reality". 10. Justus Buchler, "Philosophical Writings of Peirce". 11. Sir John Ambrose Fleming. "Evolution or Creation?". 12. Article "Rober T. Bakker: Legend of Paleontology" magazine "PREHISTORIC PLANET". 13. Wang H. "Reflections on Kurt Godel". MIT Press, 1987. 14. Wang H. "A Logical Journey: From Godel to Philosophy". MIT Press, 1996. 15. Kiryanov Dmitry “Religious and philosophical aspects of the thought of K. Gödel”. 16. Sobel J.H. "Logic and Theism." Arguments For and Against Beliefs in God". NY. Cambridge University Press. 2004. 17. Chase, Gene B. 1996. "Has Christian theology furthered mathematics" In Facets of Faith and Science vol 2: The Role of Beliefs in Mathematics and the Natural Sciences: An Augustinian Perspective. Jitse M. van der Meer (ed.) University Press of America/Pascal Center for Advanced Studies: Lanham/Ancaster. 18. De Morgan, Augustus. 1866 Sir W. R. Hamilton Gentlemans Magazine and Historical Review, vol. I. (new series): 128-134. 19. Lambert D. "Litineraire spirituel de Georges Lemaitre". Bruxelles, Lessius, 2007, P. 125. 20. Baines Reed, Talbot. A History of the Old English Letter Foundries, 1887, pp. 189–190. 21. J.H. Tiner, Louis Pasteur - Founder of Modern Medicine, Mott Media, Milford, Michigan, USA, 1990, P. 90. 22. G. M. Caroe, William Henry Bragg, 1862-1942: Man and Scientist, Lond, 1978. 23. Hildebrand 1988, P. 10. 24. E. A. Davis, Nevill Mott: Reminiscences And Appreciations, CRC Press, 1998. 25. H. Margenau, R. A. Varghese, Cosmos, Bios, Theos: Scientists Reflect on Science, God, and the Origins of the Universe, Life, and Homo Sapiens, Open Court Publishing Company, 1991. 26. D. Brian, Voice Of Genius: Conversations With Nobel Scientists And Other Luminaries, Diane Pub Co, 1995. 27. Bergman, Jerry. "Arno A. Penzias: Astrophysicist, Nobel Laureate", 1994. 28. Magdolna & Istvan Hargittai, Candid Science IV: Conversations With Famous Physicists, World Scientific Publishing Company, 2004. 29. H. Allen Orr, “Gould on God. Can religion and science be happily reconciled?”, Boston Review, Oct./Nov. 1999. 30. J. R. 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R., 24 Nov 1859″. Retrieved 2009-01-24. 52. Voltas correspondence is available in a national edition, Epistolario, 5 vols. (Bologna, 1949-1955), which, with the Opere and Aggiunte alle opere e allepistolario (Bologna. 1966), supersedes all earlier editions. 53. Bartholomew M. (1973). “Lyell and evolution: an account of Lyell’s response to the prospect of an evolutionary ancestry for man.” Brit J Hist Sci 6(3):261–303. 54. Bowler P.J. 2003. Evolution: the history of an idea. 3rd ed., University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23693-9 pp. 129-134, 215. 55. Nobel laureate: Satmars were right about Israel, Miri Chason, 01.24.06, 19:52, Israel News. 56. The man who did not win, 10/17/2003, Caroline Overington, smh.com.au. |
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)
Polish astronomer, creator of the first mathematically based model of the heliocentric system of the world. Studied at several universities in Europe. Nicolaus Copernicus did not believe that his system contradicted the Bible. In 1533, Pope Clement VII became acquainted with his theory, approved it and convinced the scientist to prepare the work for publication. Copernicus was never under fear of religious persecution - in addition to the Pope, Catholic Bishop Tiedemann Giese, Cardinal Schonberg and Protestant professor Georg Rheticus also asked him to publish a description of the heliocentric model.
Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1627).
Bacon is a philosopher who is known for pioneering the scientific method of inquiry based on experimentation and inductive reasoning. IN " De Interpretatione Naturae Prooemium“He defined his goals: knowledge of the truth, service to his country and service to the church. Although his writings emphasized experimental approach and reasoning, he rejected atheism as a phenomenon resulting from insufficient depth of philosophical knowledge, stating: “It is true that shallow knowledge in philosophy tilts the human mind towards atheism, but depth in philosophy fails it.” to religion; if the human mind turns to isolated secondary factors, it may stop there and stop moving forward; if he traces the commonality between them, their interconnection, he will come to the necessity of Providence and Divinity" ( "About Atheism").
Joannes Kepler (1571-1630).
Kepler was an outstanding mathematician and astronomer. From an early age he studied light and established the laws of planetary motion around the sun. He also came close to proposing Newton's concept of universal gravity - long before Newton was born! The idea of force in astronomy introduced by him radically changed it in modern understanding. Kepler was an extremely sincere and devout Lutheran whose works on astronomy contained descriptions of how the cosmos and celestial bodies reflected the Trinity. Kepler did not suffer persecution for his discovery of the generally accepted heliocentric system, and he was even allowed to remain as a professor (1595-1600) in Catholic Graz when the rest of the Protestants were evicted.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Italian physicist, mechanic, astronomer, philosopher and mathematician, founder of experimental physics and classical mechanics. The conflict between the scientist and the Roman Catholic Church is mentioned quite often. His work "Dialogues", which discusses the structure of the solar system, was published in 1632 and caused a lot of noise. It did not contain evidence of the heliocentric system of the world, but criticized the generally accepted system of Ptolemy at that time in favor of the Copernican system. The conflict arose due to the fact that in the “Dialogues” Galileo put into the mouth of one of the heroes, the simpleton Simplicio, arguments that Pope Urban VIII himself, an old friend of Galileo, liked to use. The Pope was offended and did not forgive Galileo for such a trick. After the “trial” and the ban on the doctrine of the heliocentric system, the scientist completed his long-planned book on mechanics, in which he formulated all the discoveries in this field that he had made earlier. Galileo said that the Bible could not make mistakes, and regarded his system as an alternative interpretation of biblical texts.
René Descartes (1596-1650)
French mathematician, scientist and philosopher, founder of the principles of modern philosophy. His study of early philosophy led him to disillusionment: as a Catholic, he had deep religious convictions that he retained until the end of his life, along with a determined, passionate desire to find the truth. At the age of twenty-four, he began searching for a way that would allow him to combine all knowledge into a single system of beliefs. His method begins with the question: “What would be known if everything else was questioned?” - implying the now famous “I think, therefore I am.” But what is often forgotten is that Descartes then formulated an almost irrefutable statement about the existence of God: we can trust our senses and logical processes only if God exists and does not want us to be misled by our own experience. Thus, God occupies a central place in Descartes' philosophy. Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon (1561-1626) are considered key figures in the history of the development of scientific methodology. It is worth noting that God occupied an important place in the system of each of them, and that both of them were considered very pious.
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
English physicist, mathematician, philosopher and astronomer, one of the founders of classical physics. In optics, mechanics and mathematics, his genius and innovation are undeniable. Newton saw mathematics and numbers in all the sciences he studied (including chemistry). A little known fact is that Newton was a deeply religious man and believed that mathematics makes a great contribution to understanding God's plan. The scientist did a great deal of work on biblical numerology and, although his views were not orthodox, he attached great importance to theology. In Newton's worldview, God is integral to the nature and absoluteness of space. In his work “Beginnings”< он заявил: «Самая прекрасная система солнца, планет и комет могла произойти только посредством премудрости и силы разумного и могущественного Существа».
Robert Boyle (1627-1691)
One of the originators and key members of the early Royal Society, Boyle gave his name to Boyle's law for gases and also wrote an important work on chemistry. Encyclopedia Britannica says of him: “On his own initiative he conducted a series of lectures, or sermons, by Boyle, which are still held, “to present the arguments of the Christian religion to notorious atheists...”. As a devout Protestant, Boyle took a special interest in spreading the Christian religion abroad, donating money for the translation and publication of the New Testament in Irish and Turkish. In 1690 he outlined his theological views in " Christian Virtuoso", in which he wrote that the study of nature was his main religious duty. While Boyle wrote against atheists in his day (the notion that atheism is a modern invention is a myth), he was certainly a much more devout Christian than the average person of his era.
Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
Michael Faraday was born into a blacksmith's family and became one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century. His work on electricity and magnetism not only revolutionized physics, but also largely led to today's lifestyles that depend on them (including computers, telephone lines, and websites). Faraday was a member of the Sandemanian community, which significantly influenced his views and greatly influenced his approach to understanding nature. Descended from Presbyterians, the Sandemanians rejected the idea of a state church and strove for a New Testament type of Christianity.
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)
Austrian biologist and botanist, author of the mathematical laws of genetics. He began his research in 1856 (three years before Charles Darwin published “The Origin of Species”) in the experimental garden at the monastery where he was a monk. In the period from 1856 to 1863. he managed to formulate the basic laws that explain the mechanism of inheritance. But in 1868, Mendel was elected abbot of the monastery and stopped his scientific studies. The results of his work remained relatively unknown until the turn of the century, when representatives of a new generation of biologists, based on the general results of their experiments, rediscovered the laws he formulated. It is interesting that in the 1860s the so-called X-Club is a community whose main goal was to weaken religious influences and promote an imaginary conflict between science and religion. One of the club members was Francis Galton, a relative of Charles Darwin, a supporter of selective crossing of people in order to “improve” the race. While the Austrian monk Mendel was single-handedly making breakthroughs in genetics, Galton wrote that the “priestly mind” only hindered science. The repetition of Mendel's experiments took place too late to be able to change Galton's ideas about the role of religion in understanding the world.
William Thomson Kelvin (1824-1907)
Kelvin was the most prominent of a small group of British scientists who helped lay the foundations of modern physics. His work covered most areas of physics, and it is said that he had more letters after his name than anyone else in the Commonwealth, as he received many honorary degrees from European universities, which recognized the value of his work. He was a strong Christian, certainly more devout than the average people of his era. Interestingly, his scientific collaborators, the physicist George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903) and James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), also had deep, passionate faith at a time when many were nominal, indifferent or anti-Christian. IN Encyclopedia Britannica it is said about him this way: “Most modern physicists consider Maxwell the 19th century scientist who had the greatest influence on physics of the 20th century; he is placed on a par with Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein for his enormous contribution to the development of fundamental science.” Lord Kelvin was an ancient Earth creationist who estimated the age of the Earth to be between 20 and 100 million years, with an upper limit of 500 million years, based on cooling rates (a low estimate due to lack of knowledge of radiogenic heating).
Max Planck (1858-1947)
Planck made major contributions to various fields of physics, but is best known for creating quantum theory, which revolutionized the understanding of the atomic and subatomic worlds. In his 1939 lecture “Religion and Natural Science,” Planck shared the view that God is present everywhere, and “the holiness of the unknown Deity is indicated by the holiness of symbols.” He believed that atheists attach too much importance to what are merely symbols. Planck was a churchwarden from 1920 until his death and believed in an Almighty, Omniscient, Benevolent (though not necessarily personal) God. Science and religion wage “a constant war against skepticism and dogmatism, against unbelief and superstition.”
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Physicist, one of the founders of modern theoretical physics. Einstein is perhaps the most famous and respected scientist of the 20th century. His name is associated with major revolutions in ideas about time, space, energy and matter. Einstein never approached a personal belief in God, but he recognized the impossibility of the emergence of the Universe without creation. Einstein said he believed in "Spinoza's God, who manifests himself in the harmony of all things, but not in a God who cares about the fate and actions of people." In fact, this is what aroused his interest in science. The scientist said: “I want to know how God created the world. I am not interested in certain phenomena in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, everything else is details.” Einstein's words about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle became a catchphrase: “God does not play dice” - for him this was an indisputable truth about the God in whom he believed. Another famous statement by Einstein is the phrase: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
We present to our readers a selection of quotes from great physicists about faith and God.
(1564-1642) – Italian philosopher, mathematician, physicist, mechanic and astronomer, who had an exceptional influence on the science of his time. He was the first to use the telescope for scientific discoveries, which included the moons of Jupiter, spots on the Sun, mountains on the Moon, and the phases of Venus. Defender of the Copernican heliocentric system and founder of experimental science.
“Nature, without a doubt, is the Second Book of God, which we should not abandon, but which we are obliged to read.”
“The intention of Scripture is to teach us how to go to heaven, not how heaven goes.”
“In the operations of nature the Lord God appears to us in a manner no less worthy of admiration than in the divine verses of Scripture.”
(1643-1727) – English physicist, mathematician, astronomer. Founderclassical theory of physics.
“The wonderful structure of the cosmos and the harmony in it can only be explained by the fact that the cosmos was created according to the plan of an Omniscient and Omnipotent Being. This is my first and last word.”
(1711-1765) Russian natural scientist, chemist, physicist, astronomer, encyclopedist. He laid the foundations of physical chemistry and the molecular kinetic theory of heat. He approved the foundations of the modern Russian literary language, a champion of the development of domestic education, science and economics. Developed a project for Moscow University. Predicted the presence of an atmosphere on the planet Venus.
“The Creator gave the human race two books. In one he showed His Majesty; in the other - His will. The first is this visible world, created by Him, so that man, looking at the enormity, beauty and harmony of its buildings, would recognize the Divine omnipotence, by faith of the concept given to himself. The second book is Holy Scripture. It shows the Creator's blessing to our salvation. In these prophetic and apostolic inspired books, interpreters and explainers are great church teachers. And in this book of the composition of this visible world, physicists, mathematicians, astronomers and other explainers of Divine actions influenced by nature are the same as the prophets, apostles and church teachers in this book.”
“Truth and faith are two sisters, daughters of one supreme parent, they can never come into conflict with each other, unless someone, out of some vanity and the testimony of his own wisdom, slanders enmity against them.”
(1775-1836) – French physicist and mathematician, discovered the fundamental lawelectrodynamics.
“The most convincing proof of the existence of God is the harmony of means by which order is maintained in the universe; thanks to this order, living beings find in their bodies everything necessary for the development and reproduction of their physical and spiritual abilities.”
(1777-1855) – German mathematician, astronomer, physicist.
“When our last hour comes, with what inexpressible joy we will direct our gaze to Him, whose presence we could only guess in this world.”
Hans Oersted (1777-1851) –Danish physicist.
“Every thorough investigation of nature ends with the recognition of the existence of God.”
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) one of the greatest physicists. He worked in the field of electrostatics, heat and electricity transfer, thermodynamics, theory of elasticity, geology, practical physics and technology. He was the first to formulate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
“Don't be afraid to be free-thinking people. If you think deeply, through science you will gain faith in God.”
Thomas Edison (1847-1931) – American inventor.
“My greatest respect and admiration goes to all engineers, especially to the greatest of them – God!”
Gustav Mee (1868-1957) – German physicist.
“It must be said that a thinking natural scientist must of necessity be a pious person. He must kneel reverently before the Divine Spirit, Who manifests Himself so clearly in nature.”
(1818-1889) in greatEnglish physicist. He worked on understanding the nature of heat, its relationship with mechanical work, which led to the discovery of the First Law of Thermodynamics. Together with Lord Kelvin, he developed the absolute temperature scale.
“After we have known and submitted to the Will of God, we have another important task: to comprehend His Wisdom, Power and Mercy from the evidences revealed in His works. Knowledge of the laws of nature is knowledge of God.”
John Ambrose Fleming (1849-1945) – British physicist and radio engineer.
“A great many modern discoveries have completely destroyed the old materialistic ideas. The universe appears to us today as a thought. But thought presupposes the presence of a Thinker.”
(1856-1940), and English physicist, studied X-rays, discovered the electron. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics 1906
“Don't be afraid to be independent thinkers! If you think strongly enough, you will inevitably be led by science to belief in God, which is the basis of religion. You will see that science is not an enemy, but a helper of religion.”
“From the tops of the towers of the fortress of science, the greatest acts of God are visible.”
Max Planck (1858-1947) outstanding German physicist, founder of quantum theory.
“Wherever and however far we look, we find no contradiction between religion and natural science; on the contrary, it is in the fundamental points that the best combination is found. Religion and natural science are not mutually exclusive, as some people believe or fear these days, but the two fields are complementary and dependent on each other.”
“Religion and science require faith in God. Moreover, for religion God stands at the beginning of all thinking, and for natural science - at the end. For some it means the foundation, and for others it means the pinnacle of building any ideological principles.”
AlbertEinstein(1879-1955) – a co-author of the special and general theories of relativity, introduced the concept of the photon, discovered the laws of the photoelectric effect, worked on problems of cosmology and unified field theory. According to many outstanding physicists (for example Lev Landau), Einstein is the most significant figure in the history of physics. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics 1921
“The harmony of natural law reveals a Reason so superior to us that, in comparison with it, all systematic thought and action of human beings is an extremely insignificant imitation.”
“My religion consists of a feeling of humble admiration for the boundless intelligence that manifests itself in the smallest details of the picture of the world, which we are only able to partially comprehend and cognize with our minds. This deep emotional confidence in the highest logical order of the structure of the universe is my idea of God.”
“The real problem is the inner state of the soul and thinking of humanity. This is not a physical problem, but an ethical problem. What frightens us is not the explosive power of the atomic bomb, but the power of the bitterness of the human heart, the explosive power for bitterness.”
“In vain, in the face of the catastrophes of the 20th century, many complain: “How did God allow it?”... Yes. He allowed: He allowed our freedom, but did not leave us in the darkness of ignorance. Let the knowledge of good and evil be indicated. And the man himself had to pay for choosing the wrong paths.”
“Every serious natural scientist must be in some way a religious person. Otherwise, he is not able to imagine that the incredibly subtle interdependencies that he observes were not invented by him. In the infinite universe the activity of an infinitely perfect Mind is revealed. The common idea of me as an atheist is a big misconception. If this idea is drawn from my scientific works, I can say that my scientific works are not understood.”
(1882-1970), German physicist, one of the creators of quantum mechanics.
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics 1954
“Science has left the question of God completely open. Science has no right to judge this.”
“Many scientists believe in God. Those who say that studying science makes a person an atheist are probably some kind of funny people.”
Niels Bohr (1885-1962)great Danish physicist, Nobel Prize laureate in physics. He created the first quantum theory of the atom and participated in the development of the foundations of quantum mechanics. He made a significant contribution to the development of the theory of the atomic nucleus and nuclear reactions, processes of interaction of elementary particles with the environment.
“It is not our business to prescribe to God how he should govern this world.”
(1892-1962), American physicist, laureateNobel Prize in Physics1927
“For me, Faith begins with the knowledge that the Supreme Mind created the Universe and man. It is not difficult for me to believe this, because the fact of the existence of a plan and, therefore, Reason is irrefutable. The order of the Universe, which unfolds before our eyes, itself testifies to the truth of the greatest and most sublime statement: “In the beginning is God.”
Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), Swiss physicist, one of the creators of quantum mechanics and relativistic quantum field theory, winner of the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physics.
“We must also admit that in all paths of knowledge and deliverance we are dependent on factors beyond our control and which in religious language bear the name of grace.”
Carl Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) German physicist, one of the creators of the foundations of quantum physics, Nobel Prize laureate in 1932.
“The first sip from the vessel of natural science makes us atheists, but at the bottom of the vessel God awaits us.”
(1902-1984) – English physicist, one of the creators of quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics, and quantum statistics. Nobel Prize in Physics 1933 “For the development of new, promising forms of atomic theory”
“Nature has this fundamental feature that the most basic physical laws are described by a mathematical theory, the apparatus of which has extraordinary power and beauty. We should just accept it as given. The situation could probably be described by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high rank, and that he used mathematics of the highest level in constructing the Universe."
“It turns out that one of the main features of nature is that the laws of fundamental physics are described by very elegant and powerful mathematical theories. To understand these theories you need to be a high-level mathematician. You may wonder: why is Nature designed this way? The only answer that can be given at the current level of knowledge is that Nature is designed this way. All that remains is to accept it. In other words, God is a very high level mathematician and He used the most advanced mathematics in creating the universe. Our feeble mathematical efforts only allow us to understand the structure of a small piece of the Universe, and as mathematics continues to develop, we hope to understand the structure of the Universe better.”