Here I take issue with the presumption made by such celebrities as Penn Jillette that all the so-called “smart people” and scientists are atheist. Nonsense. This catalog will list people of deep scientific understanding and acclaim who operate on the premise of faith.

Broglie, Louis de – Nobel Prize winner in quantum mechanics

Collins, Dr. Francis – American physician and geneticist. Director of NIH. Head of Human Genome Project. Author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief

Consolmagno, Br Guy – Vatican Chief Astronomer. Both nerd and fanatic—a fanatic about planetary science and a nerd about his Church.

Galilei, Galileo – Father of modern astronomy. (Link)

Yes, the Renaissance polymath Galileo Galilei was put under house arrest for stating his solar theories as indisputable fact. But St. Robert Bellarmine was amenable to the genius\u2019 innovative discoveries.

And, nevertheless, Galileo remained a practicing Catholic until the day he died. His own daughter became a nun. His personal testimony would not conflict with this assessment: “The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go\u2026 I give infinite thanks to God, who has been pleased to make me the first observer of marvelous things\u2026 I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

Lejeune, Dr. Jerome – French pediatrician and geneticist, best known for discovering the link of diseases to chromosome abnormalities and for his subsequent opposition to prenatal diagnosis and abortion.

Lennox, John – Oxford’s scholar talks about faith and science and atheism. “Faith is essential to science.” “Every scientist is a believer.” “The atheist solution is anti-scientific.” “Atheism is a hopeless faith”.

Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven. He proposed the theory of the expansion of the universe (also known as the Big Bang), widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble. Source Wikipedia

Mendel, Gregor – Father of genetics. Augustinian Monk.

Moscati, St. Giuseppe – Pioneer in Treating Diabetes with Insulin.

Mullan, Dermott J. – Roman Catholic astrophysicist at the Bartol Research Institute at the University of Delaware. His homepage is here. Read his Signature of God essay.

Pascal, Blaise – a good story here.

Pasteur, Louis – inventor of pasteurization.

Ruffini, Paolo (September 22, 1765 – May 10, 1822) – mathematician, physician, philosopher. Was the first to declare that the quintic and all higher order polynomials were unsolvable in the classic sense (a problem that had persisted for centuries). At one point was considering consecrated life but decided to follow an academic calling. Little mention is made of his religious devotion and refusal to swear an oath to the state. Here’s one article that attest to it.

Big list of priests in science here.

List of 12 Jesuit inventions here.