This is now the third entry in a collection of inter-related database posts. The object of these posts is to collect data about the religious convictions of leading figures in the history of various intellectual disciplines. As of this moment, I have undergone this project for mathematicians and philosophers. This list is aimed at scientists.
As a note, I realize that you can’t really prove the truth of falsity of a religious position via sociological statistics. I wouldn’t try to do that. This is not my intention here. The motivation for this project for me was to understand how culture has impacted the development of math, science, and philosophy. For example, if only 5% of humans hold to religious belief X but 20 out of the “Top 100” scientists in history believed in X, then that gives us good reason to believe that this religion either actively or passively (via other positions it affirms) encourages the pursuit of science. For instance, Christianity teaches that the universe was created by a God and that God designed the human brain to be capable of reason and intellectual pursuits. People who believe Christianity, then, would have some very good reasons to believe that science can be done – since God’s creating the universe gives them good reason to think the universe would have patterns in it, and knowing God created them in His image gives them good reason to think they are capable of discovering those patterns. On the other hand, if a religion taught as a central doctrine that the world is completely chaotic, people who believe that religion aren’t going to be doing much science, if any.
So, we can gain from these observations a sort of empirical understanding of whether certain religious backgrounds do or do not encourage scientific study. Of course, there are other factors at play here. But looking at this kind of data ought to help us understand these questions better.
As a Christian, I am particularly motivated to understand the role of Christians in science. Especially in light of the firestorm of modern accusations that Christianity is, at its core, anti-science. I’ll readily admit that there are many Christians today who oppose various scientific ideas. But, over the course of history, the data seems to show exactly the opposite. Christians appear all throughout the sciences – in fact, the data suggests that Christians are by far the dominant group in the history of science. There is a similar phenomenon in the data I collected for mathematics and philosophy.
I think it is then quite reasonable to conclude, absent other evidence, that Christianity is in no way anti-intellectual at its core, even if certain subcultures within Christianity might be anti-intellectual. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the data for yourself and see what conclusions you come to. I will be periodically updating this post with any new information I come across, as I admit readily that pinning down the religious beliefs of historical figures is often tricky to do.
Link for the Top 100 I used: https://www.sapaviva.com/
Top 100 Scientists
- Isaac Newton – Christian
- Leonhard Euler – Christian (Calvinist)
- Gottfried Leibniz – Christian
- Carl Friedrich Gauss – Christian
- Michael Faraday – Christian (Protestant)
- Euclid of Alexandria – Likely polytheist
- Galileo Galilei – Christian (Catholic)
- Nikola Tesla – Likely Deist
- Marie Curie – Agnostic
- Albert Einstein – Agnostic (maybe pantheist)
- Alhazen ibn al-Haytham – Muslim
- Louis Pasteur – Christian (Catholic)
- Johannes Kepler – Christian
- Liu Hui – Likely Taoist or Buddhist
- Max Planck – Theist (Christian most of his life)
- Augustin Louis-Cauchy – Christian (Catholic)
- James Clerk Maxwell – Christian (Evangelical or Presbyterian)
- Avicenna of Persia – Muslim
- Amedeo Avogadro – Likely Christian
- Dmitri Mendeleev – Deist
- Robert Koch – Agnostic
- Ernest Rutherford – Likely Theist (Likely Christian)
- Nicolaus Copernicus – Christian (Catholic)
- Bernhard Riemann – Christian
- Zhang Heng – Daoist/Confucian
- Blaise Pascal – Christian (Catholic)
- Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi – Muslim
- Henri Poincaré – Atheist
- Abu Rayhan Al-Biruni – Muslim
- Isambard Brunel – Unclear
- Claudius Galen of Pergamon – Unclear
- Joseph-Louis Lagrange – Agnostic
- Qin Jiushao – Unclear
- Paul Ehrlich – Likely Jewish
- Archimedes of Syracuse – Likely polytheist
- Nasir Al-Din Al-Tusi – Muslim
- Robert Boyle – Christian
- Pierre-Simon Laplace – Agnostic
- Zhu Shijie – Likely Shamanism
- Wernher von Braun – Christian (Evangelical)
- Henri Becquerel – Unclear
- David Hilbert – Agnostic
- Niels Bohr – Atheist
- Srinivasa Ramanujan – Hindu
- Gregor Mendel – Christian (Catholic, Augustinian friar)
- Emmy Noether – Likely Jewish
- Antoine Lavoisier – Christian (Catholic)
- Brahmagupta – Hindu
- Edward Jenner – Christian
- Pierre de Fermat – Christian (Likely Catholic)
- Zu Chongzhi – Unclear
- James Watt – Deist
- René Descartes – Christian (Catholic)
- John von Neumann – Likely Agnostic
- Omar al-Khayyam – Agnostic/Atheist
- Hermann von Helmholtz – Unclear
- Robert Hooke – Likely Christian
- George Washington Carver – Christian
- Pythagoras of Samos – Pythagoreanism
- Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac – Atheist
- Aryabhata – Likely Hindu
- Alessandro Volta – Christian (Catholic)
- Christiaan Huygens – Christian (Protestant)
- Carl Linnaeus – Likely Christian (Lutheran)
- Walter Hermann Nernst – Unclear
- Hippocrates of Cos – Unclear
- Charles-Augustin de Coloumb – Likely Christian (Catholic)
- Girolamo Cardano – Likely Catholic
- Andrey Kolmogorov – Unclear
- Hans Christian Oersted – Theist (Maybe Christian)
- Andreas Vesalius – Christian (Likely Catholic)
- Daniel Bernoulli – Christian (Protestant)
- Heinrich Hertz – Christian (Lutheran)
- Jean le Rond d’Alembert – Likely Christian
- Shen Kuo – Daoist or Buddhist
- Bhaskaracharya of India – Hindu
- John Dalton – Christian (Quaker)
- André-Marie Ampère – Christian
- Enrico Fermi – Agnostic
- Claude Bernard – Likely Atheist (Maybe Catholic… this is disputed)
- Johann Heinrich Lambert – Christian (Likely Protestant)
- James Prescott Joule – Christian
- Seki Kowa Takakazu – Unclear
- Hendrik Antoon Lorentz – Likely Atheist (“Freethinker”)
- Otto Hahn – Christian (Lutheran)
- Luigi Galvani – Likely Christian (Catholic)
- Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier – Christian (Likely Catholic)
- Abu-Kamil ibn Aslam Shuja – Muslim
- Georg Simon Ohm – Christian (Protestant)
- William Thomson Kelvin – Christian
- John Bardeen – Likely Deist
- Li Shizhen – Likely Neo-Confucian
- James Joseph Sylvester – Jewish
- Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen – Likely Christian
- Sergei Pavlovich Korolev – Likely atheist
- Antoinie von Leeuwenhoek – Christian (Reformed/Calvinist)
- Jesse Ernest Wilkins, Jr. – Unclear
- Humphry Davy – Deist
- Lise Meitner – Christian (Lutheran convert, ethnically Jewish)
- Alexander Fleming – Unclear (Presbyterian or Agnostic?)
Statistics on Beliefs
Total Counted: 88 (Uncounted: 12)
Theist / Atheist + Agnostic / Other: 61 / 15 / 12
Christian: 44
Atheist/Agnostic: 15
Uncommitted Theist/Deist: 8
Muslim: 6
Jewish (religiously): 3
Hindu: 4
Other: 8
