Four More Catholic Scientists You Might Not Know

[Michie]

The history of science is filled with faithful Catholics who sought to discover more and more about God’s creation.

[Editor’s Note: This is the eleventh in a multi-part series on the unsung heroes of Christendom.]

One of the most famous scientists of the twentieth century is Edwin Hubble, after whom the famous Hubble Space Telescope is named. He is also known for Hubble’s law, which states that galaxies are moving away from the Earth at speeds proportional to their distance. In other words, the farther a galaxy is from the Earth the faster it will be moving away from the Earth.

This law, confirmed by observational evidence, shows that the universe is expanding, and it is one of the proofs for the Big Bang theory. When discussing Hubble’s law, physicists also use terms such as the Hubble constant and Hubble time. What is not as well known is that Hubble’s law was not really Hubble’s law, in the sense that it had already been proposed two years before Hubble had proposed it in 1929 by the Catholic priest and physicist, Monsignor Georges Lemaître (1894-1966).

It was not until 2018 that the International Astronomical Union finally voted to change the name of the Hubble law to the Hubble-Lemaître law in belated recognition of the priest-physicist’s pioneering contribution to cosmology and to the discovery of the Big Bang theory in particular. In finally singing Father Lemaître’s praises the scientific community was finally recognizing his largely unsung role. Even today, however, an internet search for “Hubble-Lemaître law” still redirects to the Wikipedia entry for “Hubble’s law.”

Continued below.

Four More Catholic Scientists You Might Not Know

By Joseph Pearce - The history of science is filled with faithful Catholics who sought to discover more and more about God’s creation.

crisismagazine.com

 

[AlexB23]

The history of science is filled with faithful Catholics who sought to discover more and more about God’s creation.

[Editor’s Note: This is the eleventh in a multi-part series on the unsung heroes of Christendom.]

One of the most famous scientists of the twentieth century is Edwin Hubble, after whom the famous Hubble Space Telescope is named. He is also known for Hubble’s law, which states that galaxies are moving away from the Earth at speeds proportional to their distance. In other words, the farther a galaxy is from the Earth the faster it will be moving away from the Earth.

This law, confirmed by observational evidence, shows that the universe is expanding, and it is one of the proofs for the Big Bang theory. When discussing Hubble’s law, physicists also use terms such as the Hubble constant and Hubble time. What is not as well known is that Hubble’s law was not really Hubble’s law, in the sense that it had already been proposed two years before Hubble had proposed it in 1929 by the Catholic priest and physicist, Monsignor Georges Lemaître (1894-1966).

It was not until 2018 that the International Astronomical Union finally voted to change the name of the Hubble law to the Hubble-Lemaître law in belated recognition of the priest-physicist’s pioneering contribution to cosmology and to the discovery of the Big Bang theory in particular. In finally singing Father Lemaître’s praises the scientific community was finally recognizing his largely unsung role. Even today, however, an internet search for “Hubble-Lemaître law” still redirects to the Wikipedia entry for “Hubble’s law.”

Continued below.

Four More Catholic Scientists You Might Not Know

By Joseph Pearce - The history of science is filled with faithful Catholics who sought to discover more and more about God’s creation.

crisismagazine.com

Woo, thank you for posting this. Lemaître is on my list of favorite Catholic scientists, on my CF profile.

 

[Michie]

Woo, thank you for posting this. Lemaître is on my list of favorite Catholic scientists, on my CF profile.

I thought you might enjoy it Alex.

 

[AlexB23]

I thought you might enjoy it Alex.

Thank you, and the science denying Christians might want to understand that science and religion go well together.


Here is the article (Four More Catholic Scientists You Might Not Know) summarized:

The article by Joseph Pearce, published on April 6, 2024, highlights the contributions and achievements of four Catholic scientists from the twentieth century who have been relatively unsung in the scientific community. The article begins by discussing Edwin Hubble and his famous law, which shows that the universe is expanding, and how Monsignor Georges Lemaître, a Catholic priest and physicist, proposed this concept two years before Hubble. In 2018, the International Astronomical Union finally recognized Lemaître's pioneering contribution by changing the name of Hubble's law to the Hubble-Lemaître law.

The article then moves on to discuss four other Catholic scientists who deserve more recognition: Victor F. Hess, Gerty Cori, and Jérôme Lejeune.

Victor F. Hess was an Austrian-American physicist who discovered cosmic rays and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1936. He was a devout Catholic and wrote about the harmony between his faith and scientific work. Hess believed that scientists should have a good religious education to understand both nature and human life.

Gerty Cori was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Medicine, which she received in 1947 for her role in the discovery of the mechanism by which glycogen is converted into lactic acid and resynthesized as a source of energy. She was born Jewish but converted to Catholicism before her marriage in 1920. Her research with her husband, Carl, on carbohydrate metabolism was a major breakthrough.

Jérôme Lejeune was a French pediatrician and geneticist who discovered that Down syndrome is caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21. He was horrified when his discovery was used to detect and exterminate children with Down syndrome in the womb. Lejeune became a pro-life advocate and activist, and after his election to the papacy, St. John Paul II invited him to Rome and made him the first president of the Pontifical Academy for Life. Lejeune was declared Venerable by Pope Francis in 2021.

The article ends with a reflection on the importance of faith for scientists and how it brings serenity and peace to the human heart.