Can anyone name a great Scientist who was also a Christian in the last 100 years?

Question

You can even go back as far as the last decade or so of the 1900s.

Einstein as a Christian?

Funniest thing I've heard in a long time.

Try Secular Jew.

Answer 1

Present-day scientists

Although not often realized, many present-day scientists are also believers. The German-born rocket engineer Wernher von Braun, was director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in the 1960s and an administrator for planning at NASA headquarters until 1972. In a book forward, he says: "I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science. And there is certainly no scientific reason why God cannot retain the same relevance in our modern world that He held before we began probing His creation with telescope, cyclotron, and space vehicles."12
James Irwin formed the evangelical High Flight Foundation the year after he walked on the moon. He later led a High Flight expedition searching for Noah's Ark on Mt. Ararat. If he had been able to dialogue with God while on the moon, he would have asked, "Lord, is it all right if we come to visit this place?" He thought God would have answered, "It's all right as long as you give Me the honor."13
Walter Bradley is a Senior Research Fellow in mechanical engineering at Texas A&M University who has received several million dollars in research grants. During the past eight years he has lectured extensively on scientific evidence for the existence of God at most of the major U.S. universities.14 Henry Schaefer, a quantum chemist at the University of Georgia, is a five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize and was recently cited as the third most quoted chemist in the world. U.S. News & World Report (December 23, 1991) quotes him as saying, "The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it.' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan."
In a recent book, 60 leading scientists, including 24 Nobel prizewinners, answered questions about science and God. One of them is Arthur Schawlow, a professor of physics at Stanford University and a 1981 Nobel laureate in physics. He says, "It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious. . . . I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life."15
Long ago, the Psalmist recorded a gem of inspiration: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands" (Psalm 19:1, NIV). Nature calls us to recognize its Creator and nature invites us to probe its mysteries. Within the context of that call and that invitation, there need be no conflict between biblical Christianity and science, between faith and reason. A scientist can indeed be a Christian.

dabunny

Answer 2

I'm not sure if I can name one, but I'm pretty sure there have been a couple. This does not, of course, give any credence to christianity.


Now I know some ignorant people are going to say Albert Einstein... which is an incredible shame and an embarrassment. Einstein used the word "god" often, but metaphorically to mean the nature of the universe. When christians started calling him a christian he became so frustrated that he published a paper in 1940 (or around then) where he said "It is a lie, of course, what you have read about my religious convictions, one that has been systematically repeated." He went on to say that the very notion of a personal god was "alien" to him and seemed very "naive."

Einstein officially claimed he was not a christian and that he didn't believe in a personal god. He got an incredible amount of hate mail (some of it exceptionally cruel) in return... and now once again the lie is being systematically repeated. Einstein is rolling in his grave.

EDIT: Oh and Stephen Hawking is either an agnostic or atheist. He also doesn't claim to believe in a supreme being. He may verge on theist or something akin to the Einstein/Spinoza "god."

Carl Sagan was a devout non-believer, one of the first very vocal ones. There are rumors that he did convert on his deathbed because he'd rather "be safe than sorry", but I'm not sure how much validity that claim has.

Answer 3

Henry Eyring, He pioneered the application of quantum mechanics to chemistry. He also was awarded the National medal of Science for devolving the Absolute Rate Theory of chemical reactions. He was elected president of the American Chemical Society in 1963 and of the Association for the Advancement of Science in 1965.


Dr. John S. Lewis: He has research interests in the applications of chemistry to planetary sciences and space development. He joined the Church in Boston while teaching at MIT. His books include: Books: Worlds Without End: The Exploration of Planets Known and Unknown and Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets.

Russell M. Nelson: He worked on a team that developed the first machine that could perform the functions of a patient’s heart and lungs during heart surgery. In 1951, the machine performed well in the first open-heart operation on a human being. Four years later, he performed the first successful open-heart surgery using a heart-lung machine in Salt Lake City, making Utah the third state in the nation to reach this important milestone.

How many do you want?

Answer 4

George Coyne; James Skehan; Johan Stein; Robert Boyd; Carlos Filho; Michael Polanyi; Henry Eyring; Antonio Zichichi; John Polkinghorne; Owen Gingerich; R.J. Berry; Ghillean Prance; Henry Schafer; Michael heller; Arthur Peacocke; C.F. van Weizsacker; Charles Hard Townes; Ian Barbour; Stanley Jaki; Alan Sandage; Robert Bakker; Kenneth R. Miller; Francis Collins; Lawrence Doyle; John T. Houghton (to name a few)

Answer 5

No one famous, no. I'm sure there are a few religious scientists...it is possible to struggle through a science program even if you aren't particularly brilliant.

To those who keep trying to claim Albert Einstein as a religious person, aren't you worried he's going to get you in the night? You know, with your superstitious beliefs and all? He went on record several times complaining about people calling him religious.

Answer 6

Harvey Fletcher

Answer 7

Einstein was a non-practicing Jew.

As far as a great scientist who was also a Christian, none come to mind.

Answer 8

George Washington Carver... but I think he had to be because of the social conditions at the time. My name says all that needs to be said of my religious beliefs, but I have to acknowledge that there have been some great scientists that were also theists. Darwin is not one of them, that deathbed story is an attempt to discredit evolution.

Answer 9

I actually checked just because I was curious and so far the only list I could find stops at 1944. I am going to show it any way because it is kind of interesting.


Some Famous Scientists who were Christians

John Philoponus late 6th Century Aristotle's early Christian critic
Hugh of St. Victor c. 1096-1141 theologian of science
Robert Grosseteste c. 1168-1253 reform-minded bishop-scientist
Roger Bacon c. 1220-1292 Doctor Mirabiles
Dietrich von Frieberg c. 1250-c. 1310 the priest who solved the mystery of the rainbow
Thomas Bradwardine c. 1290-1349 student of motion
Nicole Oresme c. 1320-1382 inventor of scientific graphic techniques
Nicholas of Cusa 1401-1464 grappler with infinity
Georgias Agricola 1495-1555 founder of metallurgy
Johannes Kepler 1571-1630 discoverer of the laws of planetary motion
Johannes Baptista van Helmont 1579-1644 founder of pneumatic chemistry and chemical physiology
Francesco Maria Grimaldi 1618-1663 discoverer of the diffraction of light Catholic
Blaise Pascal 1623-1662 mathematical prodigy and universal genius
Robert Boyle 1627-1691 founder of modern chemistry
John Ray 1627-1705 cataloger of British flora and fauna Calvinist (denomination?)
Isaac Barrow 1630-1677 Newton's teacher
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 1632-1723 discoverer of bacteria
Niels Seno 1638-1686 founder of geology
James Bradley 1693-1762 discoverer of the aberration of starlight
Ewald Georg von Kleist c. 1700-1748 inventor of the Leyden jar
Carolus Linnaeus 1707-1778 classifer of all living things
Leonhard Euler 1707-1783 the prolific mathematician
John Dalton 1766-1844 founder of modern atomic theory
Thomas Young 1773-1829 first to conduct a double-slit experiment with light
David Brewster 1781-1868 researcher of polarized light
William Buckland 1784-1856 geologist of the Noahic flood
Adem Sedgwick 1785-1873 geologist of the Cambrian
Augustin-Jean Fresnel 1788-1827 the physicist of light waves
Augustin Louis Cauchy 1789-1857 soulwinning mathematician
Michael Faraday 1791-1867 giant of electrical research
John Frederick William Herschel 1792-1871 cataloger of the Southern skies
Matthew Fontaine Maury 1806-1873 pathfinder of the seas
Philip Henry Gosse 1810-1888 popular naturalist
Asa Gray 1810-1888 influential botanist
James Dwight Dana 1813-1895 systematizer of minerology
George Boole 1815-1864 discoverer of pure mathematics
James Prescott Joule 1818-1889 originator of Joule's Law
John Couch Adams 1819-1892 codiscoverer of Neptune
George Gabriel Stokes 1819-1903 theorist of fluorescence
Gregor Mendel 1822-1884 pioneer in genetics
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin 1824-1907 physicist of thermodynammics
Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann 1829-1907 the non-Euclidean geometer behind relativity theory
James Clerk Maxwell 1831-1879 father of modern physics
Edward William Morley 1838-1923 Michelson's partner in measuring the speed of light
Pierre-Maurice-Marie Duhem 1861-1923 the physicist who recovered the science of the Middle Ages
Georges Lemaitre 1894-1966 the priest who showed us the universe is expanding
George Washington Carver c. 1864-1943 pioneer in chemurgy
Arthur Stanley Eddington 1882-1944 the astronomer who ruled stellar theory

here is the link for where I got it there is some other interesting lists of other scientists too.

http://www.adherents.com/people/100_scientists.html#Scientific100

Answer 10

A little more than 100 years but there is Louis Pasteur.