Scientists Who Believe in God

Seven Scientists Who Believe in God

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

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

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

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

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

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

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

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

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

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

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

Pascal and Other Religions

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

Pascal’s Wager

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

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

Pascal and Evidence of Christianity

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

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

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

Other Pascal’s Ponderables

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

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

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

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

Robert Boyle (1627-1691)

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

Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

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

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

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

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

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

Gottfried W. Leibnitz (1646-1716)

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

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

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

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

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

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

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

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

Charles B. Thaxton (living)

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

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

Selected Lists of Scientists and Advances
Some Far Eastern Scientific Advances

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

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

Scientists	Lifetime	Contribution
Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee (both Chin.-Amer.)	1922- & 1926-	parity violations in weak interactions. 1957 Nobel (physics)
Chien-Shiung Wu (Chinese-American)	1912-1997	Beta decay does not preserve parity
Shinichiro Tomonaga	1906-	quantum electro-dynamics. Shared 1930 Nobel
Hideki Yukawa	1907-1981	1945 Nobel for meson
Yoichiro Namby (Japanese-Amer.)	1921	Strong interaction color symmetry
Kenichi Fukui	1918-	1981 Nobel (chem.)
Samuel Chao Chung Ting	1936-	Shared 1976 Nobel J/psi particle
Leo Esaki (Japan)	1925-	Shared 1973 Nobel semiconductor tunneling
Yuan T. Lee (Chinese-American)	1936-	Shared 1986 Nobel mass spec. detection
Susumu Tonegawa		1987 Nobel (med.)

Indian Subcontinent Advances

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

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

Middle Eastern Advances

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

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

Middle Eastern Theistic Scientists / Philosophers

Scientist	Lifetime	Contribution
Khalid ben Yezid	-708	First Muslims writer on alchemy. Pupil of the Syrian monk Marianus
Geber (Jabir ibn-Hayyan)	c.760-c.815	Arab alchemist who distilled vinegar and made nitric acid. He started the search for transmuting metals and was fascinated with liquid mercury
Abu-Maaschor (Albumazar)	805-885	Works translated into Latin, including Flores Astrologici, from which we get our word astrology. Thought the world created when 7 planets in conjunction with stars.
Mohammed ibn Mu-sa al-Khowarizmi	c.825	The word Algebra came from his name
Mohammed ben Begir al Batani (Albategnius)	c.850-929	Corrected some of Ptolemy’s tables. Introduced sines and tangents in the Mideast. His works published in Latin by Melanchthon.
Rhazes (Al-Razi)	c.850-c.925	Persian alchemist who made plaster of Paris and studied antimony
Abu Kamil	c.900	algebra contributions
Avicenna (Ibn-Sina)	979/980-1037	Most important physician between Roman and modern times. Also a scientist, philosopher, and logician who rote almost 200 works. Albert Magnus in England learned much from him
Averroes	1126-1198	Admirer of Aristotle
Avempace (Ibn Gabirol)	1021-1058	Jewish Spanish philosopher who espoused Aristotle
al-Karkhi	c.1100	algebra contributions
Quth al-Din	1236	Explained rainbow’s shape
Turks	After 1500	live smallpox vaccine

Former Soviet Union / Finland Advances

Many strong mathematicians, rockets, nuclear

Scientists	Lifetime	Contribution
Ivan P. Pavlov	1849-1936	1904 Nobel dig.nerves
Nikolai N. Semenov		1/2 1956 Nobel chem.
Mikhail Lomonosov	1711-1765	had atomic views 150 years ahead of his time. Nobody in the west read his works
Artturi I. Virtanen (Finland)		1945 Nobel (chem.)
Pyotr Kaptisa		1/3 1978 Nobel phys.
A.I. Oparin		biochemist,communist
Dmitri I. Mendeleev	1834-1907	Periodic Table
Markov		mathematician
Andrei Sakharov	1921-1989	Soviet H-bomb

Some Western Translators and Educators

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

Some Western Scientists Who Believed in God

Scientist/ Engineer	Lifetime	Contribution
Albert of Bollstadt (Albert Magnus)		Alchemist, who
Leonardo da Vinci	1452-1519	physics, art
Nicholas Copernicus	1473-1543	Taught the planets revolved around an immoveable sun
Tycho Brahe	1545-1601	At least a theist
Francis Bacon	1561-1626	scientific method
Galileo Galilei	1564-1642	telescope, gravity, solar system
Johann Kepler	1571-1626	planet’s elliptical orbits
William Harvey	1578-1657	circulation of blood. At least a theist.
Puritans	1600-1700	A higher percentage of Puritans were in the English Royal Society than in the general population
Athanasius Kircher	1601-1680	Jesuit who anticipated the germ theory and wrote of Noah’s flood
John Wilkins	1614-1672	scientist and clergyman who wrote how Noah’s ark would be of adequate size to fit all of the animals.
Walter Charleton	1619-1707	President of the Royal College of Physicians who wrote on the flood and miracles
Blaise Pascal	1623-1662	math, fluid flow
Robert Boyle	1627-1691	Boyle’s law - chemistry. Learned Hebrew, Greek, Syriac. Founded the Boyle lectures to prove Christianity vs. atheists, theists, pagans, Jews, and Muslims.
John Ray	1627-1705	natural history
Nicolaus Steno	1631-1686	stratigraphy
Thomas Burnet	1635-1715	geologist and clergyman
Nicolas Lemery	1645-1715	chemist who converted to Catholicism
Sir William Petty	1623-1687	statistics, economics
Christiaan Huygens	1629-1695	Huygen’s Principle. At least a theist
Isaac Barrow	1630-1677	Cambridge math prof. who taught Newton. He later retired to teach God’s Word
Robert Hooke	1635-1703	physicist and geologist. Hooke’s Law of elas-ticity. At least a theist
Increase Mather	1639-1723	son of Cotton Mather, astronomer on comets, theologian, and one of the first presidents of Harvard.
Nehemiah Grew	1641-1712	physician and botanist. Protestant who wrote on the unique creative design of plants and animals.
Isaac Newton	1642-1727	Co-inventor of calculus, gravity, Newton’s 3 laws
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz	1646-1716	co-inventor of calculus, and anticipated Boolean algebra
John Flamsteed	1646-1719	Founded the Greenwich observatory
William Derham	1657-1735	ecology
Cotton Mather	1662-1727	published treatises on "animacules" causing smallpox, and President of Harvard
John Woodward	1665-1728	paleontology
John Harris	1666-1719	mathematician, clergyman, Wrote an English dictionary 1704
William Whiston	12/9.1667-8/22/1752	succeeded Isaac Newton at Cambridge. Wrote on flood geology. Translated Josephus and was an Arian like Newton. He thought the Tatars were the lost tribes, and the Millennium would start in 1766.
John Hutchinson	1674-1737	paleontologist who wrote on the flood. Also studied Hebrew.
Bayes	1702-1761	Probability, Presbyterian minister
Benjamin Franklin	1706-1790	Believed in God, unsure about Christ’s divinity, had a mistress, was perhaps the last person who could know all of science.
Carolus Linnaeus	1707-1778	taxonomy-classified life
Gustavus Brander	1720-1787	paleontologist who wrote on the flood
Jean Deluc	1727-1817	Coined the word geology. He and his father invented the barometer. Wrote of a worldwide flood.
Richard Kirwan	1733-1812	mineralogy
William Herschel	1738-1822	discovered Uranus, galactic astronomy
James Parkinson	1755-1824	perforated appendix, Parkinson’s disease, wrote on the flood and coal from plants
William Kirby	1759-1850	entomologist and English clergyman
John Dalton	9/15/1766-7/17/1844	atomic theory, Dalton’s law of gases. Quaker
Benjamin Barton	1766-1815	physician, biologist, recent creationist
Thomas Malthus	1766-1834	economics, over-population, clergyman
Georges Cuvier	1769-1832	comparative anatomy
Samuel Miller	1770-1840	Presbyterian minister and influential science writer chronicling the 18th century,
Charles Bell	1774-1842	anatomist and surgeon
John Kidd	1775-1851	chemical synthetics
Humphrey Davy	1778-1829	thermokinetics, safety lamp
Benjamin Silliman	1779-1864	mineralogy, geology, founded the American Journal of Science
Peter Mark Roget	1779-1869	physician and physiologist, Roget’s Thesaurus
Thomas Chalmers	1780-1847	social scientist, professor of theology, popularized the "gap theory"
David Brewster	1781-1868	optical mineralogy, kaleidoscope, opposed Darwinism
William Buckland	1784-1856	geologist and priest in the Church of England
William Prout	1785-1850	food chemistry
Adam Sedgwick	1785-1873	Named Cambrian and Devonian periods. A friend of Darwin but against evolutionary ideas, saying the result would be harmful.
Joseph Townsend		English geologist and clergyman published much of William Smith’s work
Michael Faraday	1791-1867	Electromagnetics
Sam. F.B. Morse	1791-1872	Telegraph
John Herschel	1792-1871	son of William, he found 500 nebulas
Charles Babbage	1792-1871	Computer science, Operations research, Opthamaloscope, mathematical analysis of Biblical miracles
William Whewell	1794-1866	anemometer
Joseph Henry	1797-1866	Electric motor, galvanometer
Richard Owen	1804-1892	zoology, paleontology, non-Christian theist against Darwinism
Matthew Maury	1806-1873	oceanography
Louis Agassiz	1807-1873	glaciers, fish, most famous biologist behind Darwin
Henry Rogers	1808-1866	geology of the Appalachians, wrote of the universal flood
Phillip H. Gosse	1810-1888	Ornithologist. Plymouth Brethren, said the earth was young, but fossils and sediments created with appearance of age
James Simpson	1811-1870	anesthesiology, gynecology
James Dana	1813-1895	President of the Geological Society of America, theistic evolutionist
James Joule	1818-1889	A unit of energy is named after him
George Stokes	1819-1903	Stokes Law in fluid flow
Charles Piazzi Smyth	1819-1900	Astronomer, studied Egyptian pyramids. Weird guy influential in Anglo-Israelism error
John William Dawson	1820-1899	Canadian geologist and old-earth Creationist
Gregor Mendel	1822-1884	Mendelian genetics
Louis Pasteur	1822-1895	Bacteriology, biochemistry, sterilization, immunology. Opposed Evolution
Henri Fabre	1823-1915	entomology of living insects
Lord Kelvin (William Thompson)	1824-1907	A unit of temperature is named after him, Atlantic cable
Joseph Lister	1827-1912	antiseptic surgery
Joseph Clerk Maxwell	1831-1879	Maxwell’s law in electrodynamics, statistical thermodynamics
Bernhard Riemann (Georg F.B. Riemann)	1826-1866	non-Euclidean geometries, Riemann space
Edward Hitchcock	1793-1864	geologist in Mass. And Vermont, against Darwinism
James Glaisher	1809-1903	Founded the British Meteorological Society
Henry Rawlinson	1810-1895	deciphered Behistun inscription
Joseph Henry Gilbert	1817-1901	agricultural chemist, apposed Darwinism
Thomas Anderson	1819-1874	discovered pyridine, opposed Darwinism
William Huggins	1824-1910	astral spectrometry
Balfour Stewart	1828-1887	electricity in ionosphere
P. G. Tait	1831-1901	vector analysis
Sir William Abney	1843-1920	Interstellar molecules, son of a clergyman
Alexander MacAlister	1844-1919	Professor of Anatomy at Cambridge
A.H. Sayce	1845-1933	Expert on the Hittites
John Bell Pettigrew	1848-1894	President of the Royal Medical society. Allowed for evolution and design
George Romanes	1848-1894	biologist, physiologist. Christian, personal friend of Darwin, lost his faith, returned to Christianity, unclear if a theistic evolutionist or creationist.
Lord Rayleigh (John Strutt)	1849-1919	Fluid flow, successor to Maxwell at Cambridge
John Ambrose Fleming	1849-1945	electronics, electron tube, thermionic valve
Edward H. Maunder	1851-1928	astronomer at Greenwich
William Mitchell Ramsay	1851-1939	One of the two greatest archaeologists. Liberal who became a conservative Christian
Sir William Ramsay (born in Glasgow)	1852-1916	discovered argon, isotopic chemistry, transmuting elements. Founded the Indian Institute of Technology
Howard A. Kelly	1858-1943	Gynecology/Obstetrics prof. at Johns Hopkins. Wrote A Scientific Man and His Bible.
George Washington Carver	1864-1943	authority on peanuts and sweet potatoes at the Tuskegee Institute
Wilbur and Orville Wright	1867-1912, 1871-1948	First successful flight 12/17/1903. Wilbur assisted his father in legal work for the Church of the United Brethren in Christ
Douglas Dewar	1875-1957	Wrote books on evolution prior to being a creationist Christian
Paul Lemoine	1878-1940	ex-Evolutionist and President of the Geological Society of France
Albert Einstein	1879-1955	non-practicing Jew who firmly believed in God
Charles Stine	1882-1954	An organic chemist with DuPont. Wrote the booklet, "A Chemist and His Bible"
A. Rendle Short	1885-1955	Professor of surgery
L. Merson Davies	1890-1960	Geology, paleontology
Sir Cecil P. G. Wakeley	1892-1979	surgeon, president of the Bible League
Werner von Braun	1912-1977	rockets, Lutheran
A.E. Wilder-Smith	1915-1995	Phys. org. chemistry. 70 pubs. and 30 books.
Lane P. Lester	living	Wrote Natural Limits to Biological Change
Hugh Ross	living	astronomer
Michael Denton	living	molecular biologist who wrote Evolution : A Theory in Crisis
Charles Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, Clarence Meninga	living	molecular biologists. Authored The Mystery of Life’s Origin
Thomas G. Barnes	living	wrote Origin and Destiny of the Earth’s Magnetic Field
William A. Dembski	living	math, Intelligent Design
Robert Newman	living	Intelligent Design
Dean H. Kenyon	living	Biology, Biophysics
Jeffrey P. Schloss	living	ecology, evolutionary biology, Int. Design
Jonathan Wells	living	cell biology
Howard J. Van Till	living	astronomer, wrote The Fourth Day
Davis A. Young	living	old-earth geologist, wrote Christianity & The Age of the Earth.
Creation Research Society	1963: 10 scientists	Over 700 scientists
H.S. Lipson	quoted in 1980	physicist. "In fact, evolution became, in a sense, a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to "Bend" their observations to fit with it. .. To my mind, the theory [evolution] does not stand up at all.

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

Lest someone think all scientists believe in God, here is a few of the non-Theistic Scientists / Engineers

Scientist	lifetime	Contribution
Rene Descartes (pronounced (de CART)	1596-1650	man of science, philosopher. Immoral, could not stand a God who watched his private life
Joseph Priestley	1733-1804	chemistry of gases. Unitarian minister. Learned Sumerian, Syriac, Arabic among other languages. Invented soda water. Believed in phlogiston.
Charles Darwin	1809-1882	Theory of Evolution. Someone started the rumor that he conver-ted on his deathbed, but his letters and his son’s testimony prove that false.
Karl Marx	1818-1883	communism, economic theory. The world has not been the same since.
Sigmund Freud	1856-1939	People only have three drives: self preservation, sexual gratification, and self-destruction. (Love for God and others are excluded)
Alfred Adler	1870-1937	People often motivated by a sense of inferiority
Karl Jung	1875-dead	psychologist
Margaret Sanger	1883-1966	Overt racist who founded Planned Parenthood
Julian Huxley	1887-1975	paleontology
H. S. Shelton
J. B. S. Haldane	1892-1964	biochemist, geneticist
Joseph McCabe
Margaret Mead	1901-1978	Her research on the "free sex" in the Pacific has been largely discredited as dishonest. Before this, her results had a wide impact.
Tyndall
Abraham Maslow	1908-1970	psychologist, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Isaac Asimov	1920-200?	Influential sci. writer
Niles Eldridge		paleontology, Punctuated Equilibrium
Stephen J. Gould	recently deceased	paleontology, Punctuated Equilibrium
George C. Williams		Uniformitarian
Richard Dawkins		Uniformitarian
Maynard Smith		Uniformitarian
Stanley		Punctuated Equilibrium
Vrba		Punctuated Equilibrium
A.G. Cairns-Smith	1982	Wrote Genetic Takeover and the Mineral Origins of Life
Richard Feynman	1918-1988	Shared 1965 Nobel prize in physics
Michael Charney		anthropology, zoology
Louis W. Alvarez	1911-1988	1935 Nobel prize, impact theory for dinosaur extinction
Sidney Fox
William Shockley	1910-1989	Transitors
Donald Johanson and Time White		Paleontologists who discovered "Lucy"
H. Gutfreund		Wrote Biochemical Evolution
Stephen Hawking	living
Louis and Mary Leakey
Albert L. Lehninger		Wrote the textbook Biochemistry
Lynn Margulis		evolutionist professor. ex-wife of Carl Sagan
Ernst Mayr		Paleontology
Philip Kitcher		wrote Abusing Science : The Case Against Creationism
R.A. Fisher
Sewall Wright
Theo. Dobzhansky
G. G. Simpson
Carl Sagan		Science writer, host of "The Cosmos"
Hubert P. Yockey		Wrote The Mathema-tical Foundations of Molecular Biology
Stanley Miller	1952
Geoffrey Zubay		wrote textbook in 1983
C. Ponnamperuma		biochemist
Leslie Orgel		biochemist
R. Lohrmann
F. Clark
R.L.M. Synge

Scientists with Other Beliefs

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

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

Scientists with Unknown Beliefs

Empedocles	c.B.C. - c.430 B.C.	Came up with four kinds of matter: air, earth, fire, water
Johann Gutenberg	c.1397-c.1468	printing press
Georg Bauer (Agricola)	1494-1555	mining and metallurgy book
Andreas Vesalius	1514-1603	Anatomist
William Gilbert	1540/4-1603	electricity and magnetism
Poincare
Arrhenius
Marie and Pierre Curie		Shared 1903 Nobel prize
Laplace
Legendre
Edmund Halley	1656-1742	At 22 years old one of the most renowned astronomers
Boole		Boolean algebra
Jean Le Rond d’Alembert	11/1717-1783	French mathematician and philosopher. Figured out the precession of equinoxes
Marcello Malpighi	1628-1694	used the microscope to view capillaries and glands
Daniel Bernoulli	1700-1782	Bernoulli’s principle
Leonard Euler	1707-1783	mathematician and physicist
Henry Cavendish	1731-1810	Measured Newton’s gravitational constant
Charles Augustin de Coulomb	1736-1806	elasticity
Joseph-Louis Lagrange	1736-1813	prof. of geometry at an artillery academy when he was 18. Analytic al mechanics
James Watt	1736-1819	steam engine
Alessandro Volta	1745-1827	first electric battery
Claude Louis Berthollet	1748-1822
Antoine Francois de Fourcroy	1755-1809
James Smithson	1765-1829	English Chemist and mineralogist. Founded the Smithsonian Institution
Joseph Fourier	1768-1830	heat diffusion
Thomas Young	1773-1829	double-slit experiment
Jean-Baptiste Biot	1774-1862	light polarization
Andre Marie Ampere	1775-1836	father of electrodynamics
Amadeo Avogadro	1776-1856	Avogadro’s number
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss	1777-1855	Gauss’s Law
Hans Christian Oersted	1777-1851	electromagnetism
David Brewster	1781-1868	Brewster’s Law of light
Augustin-Jean Fresnel	1788-1827	transverse nature of light
Georg Ohm	1789-1854	Ohm’s Law V = IR
Augustin L. Cauchy	1789-1857
Felix Savart	1791-1841	electromagnetism
Gabriel Lame	1795-1870	mathematical Lame’s functions
Sadi Carnot	1796-1832	thermodynamics
Joseph Henry	1797-1878	electromagnetics
Christian Doppler	1803-1853	sound waves
Wilhelm E. Weber	1804-1891	sensitive magnetometers
William Hamilton	1805-1865	Hamiltonian classical mechanics
Johann von Lamont	1805-1879	astronomer and magnetician
Karl Weierstrass	1815-1897
Armand-Hippolyte-Louis Fizeau	1819-1896	First measured the speed of list
Jean-Bernard-Leon Foucault	1819-1868	accurately measured the speed of light
George Gabriel Stokes	1819-1903	viscosity
Hermann von Helmholtz	1821-1894	First Law of Thermodynamics: energy is conserved
Rudolf Clausius	1822-1888	Second Law of Thermo. entropy never decreases
Joseph Leidy	1823-1891	anatomy
Gustav Lirchhoff	1824-1887	Three laws of spectral analysis
Johann Balmer	1825-1898	Hydrogen spectrum
Bayer		chemist
Enrico Fermi	1901-1954	atomic physics
Navier		fluid dynamics
Lamarck		Lamarckian example: giraffes constantly stretching their necks caused offspring to have longer necks
Sir Edward Frankland	1825-1899	chemist, valence theory
Percy Faraday Frankland	1858-1946	son of Edward
William Suddards Franklin	1863-1930
Emile-Michel-Hyacinthe Lemoine	1840-1912	mathematician and engineer. Also a musician
Sir James George Frazier	1854-1941	anthropologist, author of The Golden Bow
Irving Langmuir	1881-1857	Nobel prize chemist
Rumford
Robert A. Milliken	1868-1953	1923 Nobel (physics)
Charles Friedel	1932-1899	Chemist
James Mason Crafts		Chemist
Johann Heinrich Lambert	1827-1777	mathematician, physicist, astronomer, proved the irrationality of pi, hyperbolic trig functions, theorems on conics, theoretical photometry
Joseph WIlson Swan	1828-1914	carbon-filament incandescent light
Alfred Nobel	1833-1896	Started the Nobel prizes, with the money he made from inventing dynamite. 355 patents.
Joseph Stefan	1835-1893	blackbody radiation
Ernst Mach	1838-1916	Refused to believe in atoms
Josiah Gibbs	1839-1903	chemical thermo.
Joseph Dewar	1842-1923	Liquified nitrogen, Dewar flask
Osborne Reynolds	1842-1912	Reynold’s Number in fluid flow
Charles Lapworth	1842-1920	catalogued Ordovician strata
Ludwig Boltzmann	1844-1906	statistical mechanics
Georg Cantor	1845-1918
WIllard F. Libby	1908-1980	1960 Nobel prize for radiocarbon dating
Roland Eotvos	1848-1919	gravitational and inertial mass equivalent
Roderick Murchison		geologist
Sir Horace Lamb	1849-1934	math, hydrodynamics, wave theory
Ferdinand Georg Frobenius	1849-1917	mathematician
Oliver Heaviside	1850-1925	electromagnetism, operational calculus, vectors
Geroge Francis FitzGerald	1851-1901	Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction for Michelson-Morley experiment
John Henry Poiynting	1852-1914	Poynting’s vector for electromagnetic waves
Henri Poincare	1854-1912
Janne Rydberg	1854-1919
Edwin H. Hall	1855-1938
Heinrich Hertz	1857-1894	electromagnetism
Nikola Tesla	1857-1943	alternating current
MORETOCOME
Alexander Mikhailovich Liapunov	1857-1918	mathematician
Sir William Maddock Bayliss	1860-1924	physiologist
William Shirley Bayley	1861-1943	geologist
Robert Thompson Leiper	1881-	biologist
Gilbert Newton Lewis	1875-1946	Lewis acids/bases
Bronsted		chemist
Isidor Isaac Rabi	1898-1988	1944 Nobel Magnetic resonance
Otto Stern	1888-1969	1943 Nobel - magnetic moment of a proton
Heisenberg
Robert Shapiro		biochemist, wrote Origins : A Skeptics Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth
Chandra Wickamasinghe
Ignaz Semmelweiss		reduced hospital mortality by having patients wash hands in chlorinated lime
Fred Hoyle
Morowitz
Edward Jenner	1749-1823	smallpox vaccine from cowpox. Son of a clergyman, he vaccinated many poor people for free
Max Born
Antoine Lavoisier	1743-1794
Silliam Smith	1769-1839	Father of English geology
Charles Laveran	1845-1922	discovered the plasmodian that causes malaria
Nicola Tesla	1832-1943
Ernest Rutherford	1871-1933
Andre-Marie Ampere	1775-1836
Georg Simon Ohm	1787-1854
Charles de Coulomb	1736-1806
Joseph Henry	1797-1878
Neinrich Rudolf Hertz	1857-1894
James Prescott Joule	1818-1889
Ernst Mach	1838-1916	physicist who refused to believe in atoms
Glenn T. Seborg	1912-1999	Shared 1951 Nobel prize in chemistry
George Wierstrauss
Alessandro Volta	1745-1827	Made the first battery
James Watt	1731-1819
William Eduard Weber	1804-1891
Fritz Haber		1918 Nobel prize for ammonia synthesis
de Bakey
Cooley
Paul Chu
Albert A. Michelson	1852-1931	Precisely measured the speed of light. Nobel (physics)
Morley
Willem Einthoven	1860-1927	physiologist who invented the electrocardiogram
Gotthold Ferdinand Eisenstein	1823-1852	mathematician binary quadratic forms
Walfrid Van Ikman	1874-1954	oceanographer and physicist
Christaan Eijkman	1858-1939	vitamin deficiencies
George Theobald	1859-1934	Pathology. Killed bateria cultures can give immunity
Solomon Lefschetz	1884-1972	Topology
Frederic & Irene Joliot-Curie	1900-1958 1897-1956	co-discovered artificial radioactivity
John Cockcroft	1897-1967	co-invented particle accelerator
Anton van Leeuwenhook	1632-1723	made 250 microscopes up to 270X. First to see bacteria, protozoa, rotifers
Tsung Dae Lee (Chinese born American)	1926-	Nobel physicist
Maurice H. F. Wilkins	1916-	Shared the Nobel prize with Watson and Crick
Fermat		corresponded with Pascal
Jack Kilby		Nobel prize for co-inventing the transistor
Simon Newcout(sp?)	1835-1909	famous astronomer who taught that heavier than air flight was impossible.
Louis-Victor de Broglie		1929 Nobel prize in Physics
Paul Ehrenfest		physicist and Einstein’s friend
Wheeler
WIlliam Gilbert	1544-1603	thought the earth is a giant magnet
Willebrod Snell	1580-1626	Snell’s Law of refraction
Joseph J. Thomson		1906 Nobel (physics)
Conrad Lorenz
Johannes D. van der Waals		1910 Nobel prize
Otto Hahn	1879-1968	1/2 1944 Nobel fission
Alexander Fleming	1881-1955	Observed penicillin
Erwin Schroedinger	1887-1961	Shared 1933 Nobel for atomic theory of wave mechanics
Wallace Hume Carothers	1896-1937	Chemist
John D. Cockroft	1897-1967	Shared 1951 Nobel transmuted elements
Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett	1897-1974	developed the cloud chamber
Howard Walter Florey	1898-1968	co-discovered of penicillin
P.A.M. Dirac
Wolfgang Pauli	1900-1958	1954 Nobel Paul exclusion principle
Linus Pauling	1901-1994	1954 Nobel applied quantum mech. To chemistry
Thomas Watson
Thomas R. Cech		Shared 1989 Nobel prize for self-replicating RNA. Very careful in his speech to not say anything beyond what research demonstrates
Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton	1903-1995	Shared 1951 Nobel for transmuting elements
George Gamow (Russina-Amer.)	1904-1968	nuclear reactions in stars
Otto Frisch	1904-1979	Uranium fission
(Julius) Robert Oppenheimer	1904-1967	Worked on the atom bomb
Emilio Segre	1905-1989	Shared 1959 Nobel for anti-proton
Own Chamberlain	1920-	Shared 1959 Nobel for anti-proton
Nikolai Basov (Russian)	1922-2001	Theoretical basis of the maser
Lars Onsager	(1931)
Max K.E.L. Planck		1918 Nobel prize
Neils Bohr	1885-1962	1922 Nobel, electrons orbit in energy states
Hubble
Wilhelm Roentgen		1901 Nobel prize
Antoine Cesar Becquerel	1788-1878	electrochemistry
Alexandre Becquerel	1820-1891
Louis Alfred Becquerel	1814-1862
Antoine Henri Becquerel	1852-1908	Shared 1903 Nobel prize

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