Today’s Doodle is dedicated to an amazing woman: Justine Siegemund (1636-1705), a midwife and author who had a truly scientific outlook and was a deeply pious Lutheran Christian. She is best known for her influential textbook on midwifery, “Die Kgl. Preußische und Churfürstl. Brandenburgische Hof-Wehe-Mutter” (The Royal Prussian and Electoral Brandenburg Court Midwife), which was first published in 1690 and went through many editions in the following centuries.
Siegemund began practicing midwifery in the early 1660s and quickly gained a reputation as a skilled and compassionate practitioner. She was appointed as a midwife in the Silesian town of Liegnitz (Legnica) and later became the official midwife to the court of the Elector of Brandenburg, delivering more than 6,000 babies in her lifetime.
“Nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution” is a famous quote by Theodosius Dobzhansky. In a previous blog post I referred to his 1973 article with the quote used as title, in which he emphasized that Christian faith and the theory of evolution go well together.
This was not his first mention of this dictum as I learned. In 1964, Theodor Dobzhansky presented a paper in 1964 at the American Society of Zoologists (later renamed the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology) where he explored evolutionary theory in context to other biological disciplines. He emphasized the success of molecular biology in studying the mechanisms of life. He attributed this success to the idea of treating organisms as machines without resorting to vitalism. However, Dobzhansky warned against reducing all of biology to the molecular level and stressed the importance of organismic biology, which is the study of levels above the molecular. He acknowledged the complex relationships between levels of biological organization and that advanced knowledge at one level may not inform a meaningful understanding of the upper level. Dobzhansky also argued that evolutionary thinking was essential for a complete understanding of biology as it allows for a holistic view of life, incorporating both molecular and organismic biology. The evolutionary principles of common ancestry and adaptation can explain the similarities and diversity of organisms respectively.
The Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie (VRT), the national public-service broadcaster for the Flemish Community of Belgium, has found in its archives an interview with Georges Lemaître that was thought to be lost. The cosmologist from Leuven was the founder of the big bang theory in the 1920s and 1930s. He was interviewed about it in 1964, but until recently it was thought that only a short excerpt had been preserved. Now the entire 20-minute interview has been found and published in the original French with Flemish subtitles. It is wonderful to listen to it! In addition, a transcript in English has now been published by the Journal for History of Astronomy.
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware passed away on 24 August 2022. He was a renowned and popular Orthodox Christian theologian of recent decades, and was considered the most prolific and proficient communicator of patristic theology and Orthodox spirituality in our generation.
Charles Townes (1915-2025), Physicist and Nobel Prize Winner
Charles Hard Townes (28 July 1915 – 27 June 2015) was most noted for research that led to the development of the laser, but his work spanned many disciplines, from physics, space exploration, and astronomy. He proved that black holes exist and shape the Milky Way and other galaxies. In 1964, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics with Alexander Prokhorov and Nikolay G. Basov for developing the maser-laser principle. His younger colleague Reinhard Genzel (and also a Nobel Prize winner) at the University of California in Berkeley said:
“He was a very broad scientist, a classical renaissance type — keep your mind open and be curious.”
It is perhaps the most telling fact about life so well lived and deeply tied to scientific research that Charles Townes wanted his faith in God to be mentioned in any remembrances upon his death.
Unfolding the Universe: The first pictures from the James Webb Telescope
Yesterday, on 12 July 2022, the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope were released These images provide us with the deepest and sharpest view of our cosmos to date, showing thousands of galaxies in clarity like never before.
James Webb first image – Galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 / Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
This image covers a patch of the sky “roughly the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone standing on earth”, NASA administrator Bill Nelson said. “We are looking back at more than 13 billion years. The light that you are seeing on one of these little specks has been traveling for 13 billion years” That makes the signal we are seeing just 800 million years younger than the “Big Bang.”
“Princess Therese of Bavaria was a multi-talented, clever and extremely courageous woman who, against much opposition and with incredible energy, followed her thirst for knowledge and studied the diversity of nature and indigenous people on her numerous travels.”
– Gudrun Kadereit, Princess Therese von Bayern Chair of Systematics, Biodiversity, and Evolution of Plants.
Princess Therese of Bavaria
Therese von Bayern (1850-1926) was a Bavarian princess, ethnologist, zoologist, botanist, travel writer, and advocate for the education of women.
She was courageous and tough. An adventurer traveling the world, and not giving in to any hardship whatsoever. Wild animals, extreme climate, travel hardships – such phenomena only spurred her on. From her companions, she demanded the same willingness to subordinate everything to her goal. The expeditionary party had to submit to her regiment without contradiction and forego any comforts. Riding for several days at a high marching pace for ten hours was the rule, as were night camps with strangers and animals in rooms that were noisy, cold, humid, and full of vermins. Neither extreme heat nor cold, neither pneumonia nor altitude sickness and malaria attacks, neither a broken luggage cart nor a broken rib could slow the princess down.
Her scientific mindset was extraordinary. She learned 12 languages, and every expedition was well prepared, she knew which specimens were still missing in the Bavarian museums and collections. It took her nearly 10 years of diligent work to complete the journal-like report on her 1888 expedition to Brazil, the book was well written, and plenty of footnotes comparing her findings with those in the literature.
She was Catholic. Her journal provides insights into her deep piety and her prayerful thoughts. Her faith was also caritative as exemplified in her care for wounded soldiers in her villa in Lindau am Bodensee during WWI.
And she was loyal to the people she loved. In 1864, her mother asked her on her deathbed to care for her father and her brothers, a wish she fulfilled diligently, but as she said later, nearly smashed her, since she was only 13 years old. Her father became the Prince Regent, the de facto ruler of Bavaria in 1886 and she stood at his side until his death in 1912. As a young girl, she fell in love with her cousin Otto, a love forever unfulfilled, given his poor health and psychiatric disease. She always remained loyal to her love and refused to marry despite the wishes of her family.
This blog post accompanies a poster I will present at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Catholic Scientists taking place at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary near Chicago.
Starting in the late 18th century, women were opening carrier paths in many disciplines. This presentation will focus on 12 female Catholic scientists that may serve as role models that can guide us to integrate Science and our Catholic faith into our own lives to become one of the “saints next doors”, as Pope Francis encouraged us recently.
12 Women from the late 18th to the end of the 20 century from a variety of scientific disciplines are presented here. They had two characteristics in common:
they have had an impact on the science and/or scientific education of their time and
their lives were informed, transformed, and inspired by their Catholic faith.
Life Sciences / Archaeology
Therese von Bayern (1850-1926) was a Bavarian princess, ethnologist, zoologist, botanist, travel writer, and advocate for the education of women. She led 2 scientific expeditions to South America with a truly adventurous spirit, describing them in carefully researched publications and books. She was elected by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1892 as its first honorary female member and five years later became the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Munich. Her diary reveals her close relationship with God and her deep piety. Her faith was also caritative as exemplified in her care for wounded soldiers in her villa in Lindau am Bodensee during WWI. Another characteristic was her loyalty to the people she loved. In 1864, her mother on her deathbed asked her to care for her father and her brothers, a wish she fulfilled diligently. In 1886, her father became the Prince Regent, the de facto ruler of Bavaria. She stood by his side until his death in 1912. As a young girl, she fell in love with her cousin Otto, a love forever unfulfilled, given his poor health and psychiatric disease. Yet, she remained loyal to her love and refused to marry despite the wishes of her family.
Agnes Mary Clerke (1842 – 1907) was an astronomer and science educator. She was born in Skibbereen, Ireland. Together with her sister Ellen, she received an exceptional level of knowledge, through the Ursuline nuns, and her parents. By the age of eleven, she had read Herschel’s Outlines of Astronomy. At the age of 15, she began to write her own history of astronomy. Agnes’s father owned a 4-inch telescope, and she grew up regularly observing Saturn’s rings and Jupiter’s moons. She and her sister spent ten years in Italy, mainly living in Florence where they studied science, acquired literary skills, and became excellent linguists. In 1877 the sisters went to London where the family was reunited.
I am calling Piedad de la Cierva here an “invisible” pioneer because the only information available on the internet is in Spanish, not in any other language. And even in Spain, she is not yet well known. As a chemist, she was a pioneer in three distinct areas, forced to switch gears due to external circumstances, which she developed into opportunities. In Spain of the 1940ies, she was years ahead of her time and therefore failed in her aspirations for a life in academia, turning instead to decades of fruitful industrial research.
Piedad de la Cierva Viudes (01 June 1913 – 31 Dicember 2007) was one of the first female chemists in Spain. After studying in Murcia and Valencia, she obtained her PhD in the National Institute of Physics and Chemistry situated in the Rockefeller Building in Madrid.
De la Cierva later recalled:
“I remember my great surprise when I realized that I was able to calculate the distance between the chlorine and sodium atoms of a salt crystal. And how impressed I was that God, Creator of the Universe, had distributed the atoms, so small, in such an amazing way”.
In 1935, she moved to the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen for her investigations on the nuclear transmutation of aluminum and the separation of bromine isotopes. In Copenhagen, she stayed at the Convent of the sisters of the Assumption where she fondly remembered the friendship of her tutor, Mother Hildegard. In her travels to Paris and Berlin, she met Irène Joliot Curie, the daughter of Marie Curie, herself a renowned chemist and Nobel Prize Laureate, Lise Meitner who would later immigrate to Sweden and the USA, and the couple Ida and Walter Noddak.
Science meets Faith 