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.

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.

Catholic Women Pioneers of Science

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.

You can download the poster here >>

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 (185 0-1926) 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.

Catholic female scientists through the centuries

The following blog post comes from a presentation I gave recently for some wonderful women across Europe in a monthly zoom meeting, called “Catholic Women in STEM”*. For some of the women presented here, you will find more information in previous blog posts – just follow the links.

Monasteries and Female Excellence in Science

First, let us go back in history for nearly 1.000 years.

Medieval monasteries allowed women to develop their talents, being free from the hardship that wives and mothers experienced at that time. And these women made their contributions in science, in art and in society. We start with contributions to science:

St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, and polymath. She is considered to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.

These 20 women scientists didn’t see a conflict between science and faith

Here and here are more Christian female Scientists, bringing the list to 40!

smf 20 female scientists and their faith

This message we received on twitter inspired today’s blog post:

She sounds really cool. Ever notice how Catholics always seem to be omitted from popular lists of female scientists and intellectuals?

The same lists almost always include Hypatia of Alexandria, simply because the people making the lists get to blame Christianity for her death.

— Gore Burnelli (@Gore_Burnelli) January 9, 2019

I went to my notes for Science Meets Faith and some other sources like wikipedia or John-Auguste Zahm‘s book “Women in science” and started a brief investigation, applying the following rules: (1) they should have had a scientific impact at their time and (2) I was looking for some kind of proof that their Christian faith – in whatever faith tradition, Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox (*) – was important to their personal life (being the daughter of a pastor or coming from a Catholic country just wasn’t enough to be presented here). And here are the first 20 short portraits of female scientists who took their Christian faith seriously.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, and polymath. She is considered to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.

Herrad of Landsberg (1130–1195) , the abbess of Hohenburg in Alsace compiled the scientific compendium Hortus deliciarum. She wrote this work for the nuns of her convent and it was designed to embody in words and in pictures the knowledge of her age.
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Dorothy Garrod: a woman ahead of her time

Dorothy Garrod

Dorothy Annie Elizabeth Garrod, CBE, FBA (5 May 1892 – 18 December 1968) was a British archaeologist who specialised in the Palaeolithic period. She held the position of Disney Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge from 1938 to 1952, and was the first woman to hold an Oxbridge chair.

During the first World War, two of Garrod’s brothers lost their lives in battle, and in 1919 her youngest brother died of influenza – the Spanish flu – before he was to be demobilized. Garrod herself also served in the war with the Catholic Women’s League where she ended up in Malta while her father was the head of war hospitals. Garrod’s life had become very dark and she was at a point where she needed to decide what to do with the rest of her life which would now fill this new void. Her father (Sir Archibald Garrod) was the one to suggest that during this time she occupy herself with prehistoric antiquities and she explored the ruins of the Stone Age agriculturalists and all of their successors who had built roads and temples there.

She had already earned a history degree from Newnham College, Cambridge. Returning to England from Malta, she enrolled at Oxford to study archaeology. After graduating from Oxford, she went on to work to Paris at the Institut de Paleontologié Humaine with Abbé Breuil. Abbé Henri Breuil, SJ, was a French Catholic priest and member of the Society of Jesus, archaeologist, anthropologist, ethnologist and geologist. He is noted for his studies of cave art in the Somme and Dordogne valleys. At that time, France was perhaps the epicenter of prehistoric archaeology; archaeologists classified ancient artifacts based on a system devised by 19th-century archaeologist Gabriel de Mortillet. Breuil began to revise Mortillet’s system, and Garrod continued Breuil’s work.

In the early 1920s, Garrod met Father Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, in Paris who became a lifelong friend. Her prehistoric studies had shed some doubts on her faith, and his vision in an evolutionary history helped her to return with new vigor and commitment to her Catholic faith. Garrod’s humility, thoughtfulness and gentleness was evident within her work. Her sympathy with those in need was free of sentimentality, trying, wherever possible, to alleviate the need. For example, she provided care in her house in Cambridge to an elderly and ailing former tutor.

Garrod was an avid excavator, assisting with and directing excavation for nearly 40 years. She excavated over twenty-three sites in seven countries: Britain, France, Gobraltar, Bulgaria, Anatolia, Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon. On Gibraltar, she excavated Neanderthal sites, including a child she nicknamed “Abel”, referring to the Book of Genesis. Perhaps her most important fieldwork occurred at Mount Carmel, Palestine, between 1929 and 1934. In a Mount Carmel cave named Skhul, she found apparent remains of at least 10 modern Homo sapiens; in a nearby cave named Tabun, she found remains of at least two people with Neanderthal characteristics. She studied and classified some 92,000 artifacts from Mount Carmel, and the sites she oversaw there eventually yielded a nearly continuous succession from the Old Stone Age to the Middle Stone Age.

Garrod was especially interested in the chronology of archaeological evidence, and in 1938, she argued that the terms Lower, Middle and Upper Paleolithic should be used purely to denote time periods, not types of tools. Early on, starting in her first excavations on Gibraltar, she included observations of flora and fauna in her archaeological research. She may have been the first archaeologist to incorporate aerial photography into her work.

Science meets Faith

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