The 2024 list: Catholic Women Pioneering in Science

I am preparing a talk for the 2024 Conference of the Society of Catholic Scientists, my contribution is titled: “With the Future in Mind: Catholic Women Pioneers in Science”.

The women presented here come from a variety of scientific disciplines and lead lives as diverse as life itself can be, but they all had two characteristics in common: (1) they have had an impact on the science and/or scientific education at their time and (2) their lives were informed, transformed, and inspired by their Catholic faith.

Twenty-four of these women were presented in the 2023 post, and 11 new short biographies have been added.

Lise Meitner, Eva von Bahr, and Elisabeth Schiemann: the power of friendship

Memorial for Lise Meitner, Humboldt Universität Berlin, created by Anna Franziska Schwarzbach

These three female scientists were unique in their personalities and bound together in friendship. Did you know that Lise Meitner – who discovered the principle of nuclear fission – was supported by her previous colleague Eva von Bahr to build up a new life in Sweden when she needed to flee Germany in 1938? And that Elisabeth Schiemann was a leading botanist and an active member of the “Confessing Church”, active in the resistance to the Nazi regime?

I explored this and more in my recent article “Three pioneering women in science: a story of science, faith, and the power of friendship” on the website of the Society of Catholic Scientists.

Darwin and Mendel on Inherited Variability

Darwin’s Origin of Species took many years of compilations and it was even accelerated by Alfred R. Wallace paper on the same subject in 1858. Origin of Species was really groundbreaking, because Darwin not only proposed common ancestry – that was in the air since Humboldt and Lamarck, and “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation” -, but he proposed also a process for the underlying mechanism of the diversity of species.

His theory of evolution had 2 principles: common ancestry and natural selection. Natural selection can be described with 5 words: Variation, Inheritance, Selection, Time, Adaptation. Inherited variability and a selection pressure to adapt to the environment.

In Darwin’s time, the source of inherited variability was unknown. Darwin considered heredity as a “blending” process and the offspring were seen as essentially a “dilution” of the different parental characteristics.

Revisiting the Galileo Affair

Recently, in a talk to a small group of Catholic women scientists, I suggested we need to see events in the 17th century from the perspective of 17^th century history and scientific knowledge.

Indeed, from today’s perspective, it may seem completely antiquated not to know that the Earth is orbiting the Sun, and not vice versa. In the early 17th century, though, there were (at least) 4 models of our planetary system:

the Ptolemaic system (geocentric),
the Copernican system (heliocentric),
the Tychonic system (geo-heliocentric), and
the Keplerian system (heliocentric, elliptic orbits)

The Galileo affair has indeed often been used as an argument that the Catholic Church was hostile to science and that Galileo was a martyr for science, as it were. This timeline article is intended to set the historical record straight. Based on the scientific knowledge of the time, a heliocentric model was not obvious. While heliocentrism ultimately turned out to be right, Galileo could not present the scientific proofs for it, which came much later. Moreover, Galileo ventured into advising theologians how to interpret Scripture, going beyond his position as a scientist.

A timeline representation of the story is available here (click on the image below:)

St. Giuseppe Moscati: Scientist, Physician, and Pioneer in biochemistry

I learned from my colleague Sinto Varghese that Giuseppe Moscati was not only a physician and a saint, but also a scientist and researcher. Sinto Varghese writes on ‘Church and Science’: you find him on X, formally Twitter: @ChurchNScience, and on FB https://www.facebook.com/CatholicsandScience. I am using his entry with permission.

Giuseppe Moscati (25 July 1880 – 12 April 1927) was an Italian physician who made pioneering contributions to medicine in his time. He seamlessly integrated traditional clinical diagnostic methods, primarily reliant on physical examination, with the insights of physiological chemistry. His published works provide an insight into his scientific contributions, with a particular emphasis on his revolutionary approaches to treating juvenile diabetes. Moscati is rightfully recognized as the first practitioner to introduce insulin therapy in Italy, earning him the distinction of being a pioneer in modern diabetology and endocrinology. He also employed light microscopy to determine the quantity of blood in experimental nephritis.

Laudate Deum: Anthropological Insights from Pope Francis’ Letter

Pope Francis employs powerful words to articulate his concern regarding anthropogenic climate change. He calls for immediate action from those in positions of authority, within communities, nations, and the international community of states. Sharing these concerns, both as a Catholic and a scientist (albeit not a climate science expert), I am committed to more than worry and complaint. Consequently, I suggest approaching “Laudate Deum” (“Praise God”, LD) with the perspective of personal learning, to enhance our reverence for and care of Creation, and to take responsibility for our environment.

Reading in context

On 04 October 2023, the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis, in his apostolic exhortation Laudate Deum (“Praise God”, LD), urgently reminds us that we are too slow to mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change, one of the environmental aspects of our responsibility for “our common home.” You might wonder why the Pope is addressing what might seem like a secular concern, such as climate science, ecology, and strategies for mitigating the undesirable consequences of a warming planet. To fully grasp the context, it’s essential to view “Laudate Deum” as a sequel or, more accurately, as an addendum to Laudato Si (LS).

Laudato Si is an encyclical – a document of higher authority than Laudate Deum, – and delves into the theology of creation and addresses a spectrum of ecological challenges: pollution, waste, climate change, rising carbon dioxide levels, scarcity of water for an increasing global population, and the loss of biodiversity. Back in 2015, Pope Francis said that the responses to these challenges have been inadequate, stating:

“These situations have caused sister earth, along with all the abandoned of our world, to cry out, pleading that we take another course. Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years. Yet we are called to be instruments of God our Father, so that our planet might be what he desired when he created it and correspond with his plan for peace, beauty and fullness.”
Pope Francis, LS 53

Christian Women Pioneering in Science

We have featured various women scientists in our previous blog posts. In this article, we aim to unite over 50 remarkable women who have significantly influenced science and/or science education during their time. The selection process adhered to two specific criteria: (1) their notable impact on science or science education, and (2) the profound influence of their Christian faith on their lives. We sought compelling evidence that their Christian beliefs, irrespective of their faith tradition (Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox), played a pivotal role in shaping their personal experiences. Mere familial connections, such as being a pastor’s daughter or coming from a Catholic country, were not sufficient for inclusion in this presentation.

A message of hope: the life of Takashi Nagai

Takashi Nagai was a convert to the Catholic faith, a radiologist, and a survivor of the atomic blast on 09 August 1945 in the city of Nagasaki. His life and the life of his wife Midori are powerful testimonies of faith, hope, and love.

Convert

Takashi Nagai was born in 1908 into a family practicing Shintoism. His family had a passion for medical research, preparing him to become a physician-scientist. However, during his years in college, he adopted materialistic atheistic viewpoints. The foundation of his materialistic beliefs was shattered when he witnessed his mother’s death from hemorrhagic fever in 1930. In her final moments, as he looked into her eyes, he saw a spark of her soul. This profound experience demolished the ideological framework he had constructed for himself. Takashi later reflected, “Through that last penetrating glance, my mother shattered the walls of my constructed belief system. In her final moments, she spoke to me, conveying the message that the human spirit continues to exist beyond death. This realization came to me as an intuition, an intuition that had the flavor of truth.”

Erich Wasmann, SJ: an Early Advocate for Theistic Evolution

Erich Wasmann, SJ, was born in 1859, in Tyrol, Austria, the same year Charles Darwin published his seminal work, “On the Origin of Species.” Wasmann is renowned for his efforts to reconcile the Catholic faith with Darwin’s theory of evolution, advocating the idea that the two were compatible.

In 1883, Wasmann was asked to contribute articles on eusocial insects to the Jesuit periodical “Stimmen aus Maria Laach,” later called “Stimmen der Zeit”. In 1884, he began studying ants, both in their natural habitat and by constructing artificial ant colonies. Over his lifetime (he died in 1931), Wasmann assembled a unique collection comprising over 1,000 ant species, 200 termite species, and 2,000 species of myrmecophiles, ultimately describing 933 new species.

St. George Mivart challenging Charles Darwin

St. George Mivart (30 November 1827 – 1 April 1900) was a prominent zoologist and initially a strong proponent of Darwin’s theory of evolution. However, in 1871, he published “The Genesis of Species”, in which he acknowledged the reality of evolution as a historical fact but criticized natural selection as the sole mechanism driving evolutionary processes. Mivart argued that natural selection had limitations and that other biological factors must be considered in association with it. Charles Darwin found Mivart’s critique significant enough to respond to it in detail in the sixth edition of “On the Origin of Species”.

Mivart’s career was long and distinguished. In 1862, he was appointed Lecturer on Comparative Anatomy at St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School. In 1874, he was appointed professor of Biology at the (Catholic) University College, Kensington. From 1890 to 1893, he gave a course of lectures on “The Philosophy of Natural History” at the University of Louvain. He was a member of the Royal Institution from 1849, a Fellow of the Zoological Society from 1858, and served as Vice-President twice (in 1869 and 1882). He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1862, served as its Secretary from 1874 to 1880, and was later named Vice-President in 1892. In 1867, he was elected a member of the Royal Society. He received honorary degrees in 1876 from Pope Pius IX and in 1884 from the University of Louvain.

Science meets Faith

Can you be both, Scientist and Christian at the same time? Yes, you can – yes, we can!